Syria is committed to the convention against chemical weapons it signed under a US-Russian deal and sees “no obstacles” to its implementation, President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview broadcast Thursday.
Speaking to Venezuela’s Telesur, the Syrian leader insisted that his regime was complying with a deal under which Damascus will turn over its chemical weapons for destruction.
“Syria is generally committed to all the agreements that it signs,” he said in an interview published in full by the Syrian state news agency SANA on Thursday.
He said Damascus had begun to send the required details of its chemical arsenal to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons which is overseeing the deal, and that OPCW inspectors were expected to visit Syria.
“Experts (from the OPCW) will come to Syria in the coming period to look into the status of these weapons,” he said.
“As the Syrian government, there are no serious obstacles,” he said.
“But there is always the possibility that the terrorists will obstruct the work of the experts by preventing them from accessing certain places,” Assad added.
The Syrian regime calls all those fighting against it “terrorists”.
Syria agreed to turn over its chemical arsenal under a deal thrashed out following an August 21 sarin attack in the suburbs of Damascus, which killed hundreds of people.
The attack, which occurred as UN chemical weapons experts were in Syria investigating previous alleged chemical attacks, was blamed on the Syrian regime by Washington and other international backers of the Syrian opposition.
Assad’s government denies involvement, but agreed to turn over its chemical arsenal in the face of threatened US military action in response to the August 21 attack.
The UN experts, who confirmed that sarin gas was used in the attack, arrived back in Damascus on Wednesday and are to resume investigations into other previous alleged attacks.
Assad said his government would ensure the UN experts were also able to move around freely, insisting that his regime had invited them to come.
“We are the ones who invited them to come to Syria in March when the terrorists used poison gas in a suburb of the city of Aleppo,” he said. – AFP
If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qaida.
Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted “All for one and one for all” each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.
The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.
This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qaida – though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qaida’s affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.
Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qaida for intelligence help – after all, this is the group with “boots on the ground”, something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qaida could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qaida, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.
There will be some ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qaida to death in Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians – they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qaida’s enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa’ida or the Nusra front.
And our own Prime Minister will applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa’ida, whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps – since there is no institutional memory left among modern governments – Cameron has forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and himself to those uttered by Bush and Blair a decade ago, the same bland assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite enough evidence to make it stick.
In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by YouTube. This doesn’t mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying Syrian civilians are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?
And while we’re talking about institutional memory, hands up which of our jolly statesmen know what happened last time the Americans took on the Syrian government army? I bet they can’t remember. Well it happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley on 4 December 1983. I recall this very well because I was here in Lebanon. An American A-6 fighter bomber was hit by a Syrian Strela missile – Russian made, naturally – and crash-landed in the Bekaa; its pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and freighted off to jail in Damascus. Jesse Jackson had to travel to Syria to get him back after almost a month amid many clichés about “ending the cycle of violence”. Another American plane – this time an A-7 – was also hit by Syrian fire but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean where he was plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was also destroyed.
Sure, we are told that it will be a short strike on Syria, in and out, a couple of days. That’s what Obama likes to think. But think Iran. Think Hezbollah. I rather suspect – if Obama does go ahead – that this one will run and run. – The Independent
Russia has sent advanced antiship cruise missiles to Syria, a move that illustrates the depth of its support for the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, American officials said Thursday.
Russia has previously provided a version of the missiles, called Yakhonts, to Syria. But those delivered recently are outfitted with an advanced radar that makes them more effective, according to American officials who are familiar with classified intelligence reports and would only discuss the shipment on the basis of anonymity.
Unlike Scud and other longer-range surface-to-surface missiles that the Assad government has used against opposition forces, the Yakhont antiship missile system provides the Syrian military a formidable weapon to counter any effort by international forces to reinforce Syrian opposition fighters by imposing a naval embargo, establishing a no-fly zone or carrying out limited airstrikes.
“It enables the regime to deter foreign forces looking to supply the opposition from the sea, or from undertaking a more active role if a no-fly zone or shipping embargo were to be declared at some point,” said Nick Brown, editor in chief of IHS Jane’s International Defense Review. “It’s a real ship killer.”
Jeffrey White, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former senior American intelligence official, said Syria’s strengthened arsenal would “tend to push Western or allied naval activity further off the coast” and was also “a signal of the Russian commitment to the Syrian government.”
The disclosure of the delivery comes as Russia and the United States are planning to convene an international conference that is aimed at ending the brutal conflict in Syria, which has killed more than 70,000. That conference is expected to be held in early June and to include representatives of the Assad government and the Syrian opposition.
Secretary of State John Kerry has repeatedly said that it is the United States’ hope to change Mr. Assad’s “calculations” about his ability to hold on to power so that he will allow negotiations for a political solution to the conflict. Mr. Kerry indicated that he had raised the issue of Russian arms deliveries to Syria during his recent visit to Moscow, but declined to provide details.
“I think we’ve made it crystal clear we would prefer that Russia was not supplying assistance,” he said. “That hasn’t changed.”
American officials have been concerned that the flow of Russian and Iranian arms to Syria will buttress Mr. Assad’s apparent belief that he can prevail militarily.
“This weapons transfer is obviously disappointing and will set back efforts to promote the political transition that is in the best interests of the Syrian people and the region,” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement on Thursday night. “There is now greater urgency for the U.S. to step up assistance to the moderate opposition forces who can lead Syria after Assad.”
Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and the committee chairman, added in a statement, “Russia is offering cover to a despotic ruler and defending a bankrupt regime.”
Syria ordered the coastal defense version of the Yakhont system from Russia in 2007 and received the first batteries in early 2011, according to Jane’s. The initial order covered 72 missiles, 36 launcher vehicles, and support equipment, and the systems have been displayed in the country.
The batteries are mobile, which makes them more difficult to attack. Each consists of missiles, a three-missile launcher and a command-and-control vehicle.
The missiles are about 22 feet long, carry either a high-explosive or armor-piercing warhead, and have a range of about 180 miles, according to Jane’s.
They can be steered to a target’s general location by longer-range radars, but each missile has its own radar to help evade a ship’s defenses and home in as it approaches its target.
Two senior American officials said that the most recent shipment contained missiles with a more advanced guidance system than earlier shipments.
Russia has longstanding interests in Syria, including a naval base at the Mediterranean port of Tartus.
As the Syria crisis has escalated, Russia has gradually augmented its naval presence in the region. In January, more than two dozen Russian warships sailed to the Black and Mediterranean Seas to take part in what the Defense Ministry said was to be the country’s largest naval exercise in decades, testing the ships’ ability to deploy outside Russian waters.
A month later, after the Black Sea exercises ended, the Russian Defense Ministry news agency said that four large landing vessels were on their way to operations off the coast of Syria.
“Based on the results of the navy exercises in the Black and Mediterranean seas,” the ministry said at the time, “the ministry leadership has taken a decision to continue combat duty by Russian warships in the Mediterranean.”
If you care about rebels the world over, as Sens. John McCain, Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham think you ought to, consider the fate of one brave rebel. Stacked as they are with The Dictator’s judges, the courts in this rebel’s country want to place him behind bars for shooting a predator on his property. Ursus arctos horribilis is a wild and extremely dangerous carnivore that thrives in the northwestern parts of this dictator’s dominion.
The tribesman is guilty of no more than aggressively repelling from human habitat a creature that had become brazen, making itself at home near the man’s six young children, as they frolicked.
It used to be that the country’s tribesmen instilled fear in encroaching beasts, animal and human. But due to decades of cultural and legal emasculation, under a succession of like-minded dictators, the queered men folk are no longer licensed to protect home and hearth. If they do, they risk losing their liberty.
One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Our rebel’s plight would never be popularized by CNN’s Anderson Cooper or the rest of America’s journalistic priesthood. For he is an American, one among many.
“Jeremy M. Hill, 33, pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court to killing a grizzly bear with a rifle on his 20-acre property near Porthill, Idaho, at the Canadian border.
At least five of Mr. Hill’s six young kids, ranging in age from 14 years to 10 months, were home when their dad killed a brown bear that had gone after penned pigs the kids had been raising.
I wonder how many Syrian rebels or regulars President Bashar al-Assad has arrested for shooting wild animals that had threatened their families.
If given the choice, this scribe would choose the absolute right to defend life and property over the democratic vote, any day.
Fighters for the family and the farm are never “rebels.” Or so McCain, Lieberman and Graham would impatiently insist. Wresting dominion from the distributive state: now that’s the defining battle of an “authentic” freedom fighter.
Speaking of our Syrian soul mates, the Free Syria Army, aka “The Rebels”: By now you’ve viewed their handiwork. Purity of arms is not exactly their military or moral motto. In footage uploaded to the Internet Aug. 2, members of the Free Syria Army were captured committing war crimes. They lined up pro-government militia against a wall in the city of Aleppo and mowed them down.
Where have we seen a similar scene before? Yes, yes, on YouTube. But YouTube is not a place, America; Libya is.
Backed by American drones and French fighter jets above, another bunch of rebels to whom the U.S. took a shine intercepted Col. Moammar Gadhafi as he fled his hometown of Sirte, dragged him from his vehicle and lynched him then and there.
To these rebels’ blood-curdling harangues of “Allahu Akbar,” Hillary Rodham Clinton added her own ululation. “We came, we saw, he died!” cackled the secretary of state in solidarity, when tidings arrived of the actions of her thugs of choice.
Political illiteracy being a precondition for political office, these “three blind mice,” naturally, don’t know Shia from Shinola. Grasping Syria’s ethnic and religious mix is clearly beyond the ken of one John McCain.
“To put it simply,” writes its Times Literary Supplement reviewer, “the Alawite sect, to which Bashar al-Assad belongs, is favored by the regime. The Christians are in a similar position. Therefore, both of these groups support the government. The Sunnis are a marginalized majority, so many turn to political Islam to find a voice. The Kurds are non-Arabs in an ‘Arab Republic.’ Many do not feel Syrian and even support Israel. Damascenes are isolated and care little for anything outside Damascus.”
The analysis in “Revolt in Syria” makes it clear that the divisions between the factions are in flux. “There are Sunnis who ‘would die for the president,’” as are there anti-government Christians.
The recent slaughter perpetrated by her preferred sect has yet to elicit Secretary Clinton’s familiar hee-haws.
Given her history in Libya, Hillary is likely postponing the hoedown for when her proxies eliminate Bashar al-Assad.
The UN Human Rights Council’s annual session opens Monday determined to put more pressure on Syria’s hardline regime after publication of a list of officials suspected of crimes against humanity.
“We want Syrian authorities to give up being in denial,” said one diplomat. The Human Rights Council must “continue to put pressure on Syrian authorities”.
The annual meetings which will be opened by UN rights chief Navi Pillay and Nassir Abdulaziz Al Nasser of Qatar, president of the UN General Assembly for 2011-12, will also look into latest developments in Iran, Libya, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and North Korea.
However debates during the first three days were expected to focus on the nearly one-year deadly crackdown by the regime of Bashar al-Assad on dissent in Syria.
More than 7,600 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted in March, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
About 90 government ministers and senior officials, including the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Spain, Egypt and Iran, as well as Libyan Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib, were expected to attend.
Qatar, which has backed calls for an Arab peacekeeping force in Syria, and several other Arab countries, the European Union and the United States have called for an “urgent debate” on the escalating crisis on Tuesday.
“I hope that a strong political message will come from this debate with an appeal for better access to humanitarian aid, and particularly a humanitarian truce for which the ICRC continues to work,” said council president Laura Dupuy Lasserre of Uruguay.
International investigators on Thursday gave Pillay a list of Syrian military and political officials suspected of crimes against humanity that will be discussed on March 12.
The UN-commissioned panel said it documented a widespread and systematic pattern of gross violations by Syrian forces, “in conditions of impunity”, since March 2011.
It said Syria’s government had “manifestly failed” to protect its people, but also said it had found instances of gross abuses committed by rebel fighters, many of them army defectors.
The commission recommended the initiation of an inclusive political dialogue, bringing together the government and opposition groups.
The human rights council was expected to look into a draft resolution that would renew the panel mandate.
The council wants international pressure on the Assad regime to be stepped up, an end to the violence and better access for humanitarian aid, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, US ambassador to the council, told a press briefing.
A European diplomat also confirmed that the annual session which winds up on March 23 aims to agree on a “strong resolution” as the situation on the ground continued to get worse. He called the panel list “shattering”.
The council has so far held three special sessions on the festering Syria crisis and Pillay has asked the UN Security Council and General Assembly in New York to hold Assad to account for crimes against humanity.
Hasni Abidi, director of the Study and Research Centre for the Arab and Mediterranean World in Geneva, praised the council for its work in the Syria crisis, saying that “for the first time we can see that the human rights council has an edge over traditional UN bodies” in New York.
“It sets the bar very high,” he told AFP, “which means that there is no possible room left for negotiations with the Assad clan when those people are wanted for crimes against humanity.”
Religious intolerance, freedom of expression, human rights violations because of sexual orientation and minority rights are also on the menu of the four-week session.
On March 7 a debate on gay rights has been scheduled but the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has expressed its misgivings.
“We hope that member countries of the OIC will not boycott the debate, which would be a very negative message,” said Dupuy Lasserre.
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