DEVELOPMENTS
• Hezbollah’s leader vowed Friday that his militants would keep fighting in Syria “wherever needed” after the U.S. agreed to arm the rebels in the civil war. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, chief of the Shiite Hezbollah group in Lebanon, appeared unwavering in his support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
• Forces loyal to the Syrian government stepped up their assault on the key rebel stronghold of Aleppo on Friday, leading to some of the heaviest fighting in months, according to outside observers and fighters in the city.
• The 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council again called for an immediate end to the violence in Syria, and demanded that the government cooperate with its investigators. By a vote of 37-1, the U.N’s top human rights forum approved a resolution to condemn the abuses in Syria’s civil war and the involvement of foreign fighters, and to urge nations to give more money to Syria’s neighbors grappling with the flood of 1.6 million refugees. Nine countries abstained; only Venezuela was opposed.
News services
The Obama administration hopes its decision to give lethal aid to Syrian rebels will prompt other nations to beef up assistance, now that the U.S. has cited evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its people. But the international reaction Friday ranged from flat-out disbelief of the U.S. intelligence assessments to calls for negotiation before more weapons pour into the vicious civil war.
The administration now says it has “high confidence” that President Bashar Assad’s forces have killed up to 150 people with sarin gas. Although that’s a tiny percentage of the approximately 93,000 killed in the civil war so far, the use of a chemical weapon crosses President Barack Obama’s “red line” for escalating U.S. involvement in the conflict and prompted the decision to send arms and ammunition, not just humanitarian aid and defensive non-lethal help like armored vests and night goggles.
The administration’s plan heading into the G8 meeting of industrialized nations, which begins Monday, is to use the chemical weapons announcement and Obama’s decision on arms to persuade Russia to increase pressure on Assad to send a credible negotiating team to Geneva for talks with the opposition.
In addition, Obama is expected to use the G8 meeting and discussions on the sidelines to further coordinate with the British, French and potentially others an increase of assistance — lethal, non-lethal and humanitarian — to the rebels, the political opposition and refugees.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said the United States has determined that sarin was used in a March 19 attack on the Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal and in an April 13 attack on the neighborhood of Shaykh Maqsud. She said unspecified chemicals, possibly including chemical warfare agents, were used May 14 in an attack on Qasr Abu Samrah and in a May 23 attack on Adra.
U.S. officials have not disclosed any details about the weapons they intend to send to Syria or when and how they will be delivered. According to officials, the U.S. is most likely to provide the rebel fighters with small arms, ammunition, assault rifles and a variety of anti-tank weaponry such as shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and other missiles.
As of Friday, however, no final decisions had been made on the details or when it would reach the rebels, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal administration discussions with reporters.
The biggest hurdle for the U.S. strategy remains Russia, a major weapons supplier to Assad.
President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Friday that Moscow doesn’t believe the U.S. finding on chemical weapons.
“I wouldn’t like to draw parallels with the famous dossier of Secretary of State Colin Powell, but the facts, the information presented by the U.S. didn’t look convincing,” he said. The comment indeed drew a parallel with Powell’s speech to the U.N. asserting prewar Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, a claim that proved false.
Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, acknowledged the differences that remain between U.S. and Russia on the Syrian crisis. Despite their disagreement over chemical weapon use, the U.S. will continue to talk to the Russians about ways to achieve a political settlement in Syria, considered the best option by all.
“We have no illusions that that’s going to be easy,” Rhodes said, adding that Obama and Putin would meet next week.
Getting Western allies to increase support for the rebels won’t necessarily be easy, either.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has said he there is credible evidence of “multiple attacks” using chemical weapons by Assad’s fighters, but indicated that al-Qaida-linked elements in the opposition movement had also attempted to acquire chemical weapons for probable use in Syria. Still, he restated the government’s position that no decision had been taken to arm moderate rebels opposed to Assad.
French President Francois Hollandesaid Friday that the use of chemical weapons by Assad “confirms that we must exercise pressure on the regime.” But Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot would not say whether the U.S. claim of chemical weapons adds momentum to arming rebels.
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