Internet running
again after outage
Internet service was restored in Syria on Wednesday, after a countrywide outage cut off the country from the rest of the world for nearly 20 hours, state media said. The state news agency SANA said a problem with a fiber optics cable was to blame for the second nationwide outage since a two-day blackout in November. There had been speculation that the regime pulled the plug, possibly as a cover for military actions in the deadly conflict, now in its third year. But no large-scale military offensives were reported Wednesday, and there were no immediate allegations of sabotage by the opposition.
Regime push into
strategic town
Syrian troops pushed Wednesday into a strategic town along the highway leading to the Jordanian border. The regime’s advance into Khirbet Ghazaleh, a town south of Damascus along a key artery to the border, came after weeks of fighting and government attempts to secure the highway. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the push was part of a wider offensive against rebels in which President Bashar Assad’s troops have regained some areas around Damascus, in the central province of Homs near the Lebanese border and in the region of Aleppo to the north.
The Obama administration is providing $100 million in new Syria aid, U.S. officials said Wednesday, but the money is for humanitarian purposes only and not linked to any decision on arming Syrian rebels.
Secretary of State John Kerry will make the announcement today in Rome, where his diplomacy includes a meeting with Jordan’s foreign minister.
The new funds will help support 1.4 million Syrian refugees, including many in U.S. ally Jordan, and hundreds of thousands of other civilians still trapped by the violence inside Syria’s border. Total U.S. humanitarian assistance in the two-year war will climb to $510 million.
The U.S. officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter ahead of Kerry’s announcement and demanded anonymity.
While the cash influx will certainly be welcomed by aid groups and refugee organizations that have lamented a lack of financial support, it is unlikely to end the clamoring for lethal assistance among the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The Obama administration has said it is considering providing weapons to vetted units in the armed opposition, among other military options, following last week’s revelation of a U.S. intelligence assessment suggested chemical weapons use by the Assad regime. The U.S. also is looking for ways to halt the violence that has killed more than 70,000 people.
But the U.S. maintains deep reservations about providing direct military assistance, given the growing presence of al-Qaida-linked and other extremists in the rebel ranks.
Underscoring the administration’s goal of a peaceful transition of power to end the war, Kerry met for more than five hours Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.
Afterward, Kerry and Lavrov declared that the U.S. and Russia would convene an international conference on Syria in the coming weeks with the goal of corralling Assad’s government and opposition representatives into peace talks. Kerry said the U.S. would make its decision on arming the rebels in part on the progress of that effort.
Kerry’s expected announcement Thursday is more straightforward. It is meant to help Syrian neighbors that are struggling to cope with the large and growing refugee toll, and assure them that they won’t be left to deal with the economic impact on their own.
The U.S. is the largest single humanitarian donor in the Syrian conflict and is hoping that its money will convince countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to maintain open borders with Syria, and not force any refugees back to a life-threatening situation in their home country.
The money goes to the U.N. agencies for children and refugees. Nearly half of the aid is for food, shelter, health and other programs in Jordan, which is building a new refugee camp at Azraq.
Some $32 million is for Lebanon and $9.5 million for programs in Turkey.
The U.S. is giving $16 million to provide affected civilians inside Syria with basic necessities such as blankets, hygiene kits, clothing, health care and cash assistance for daily life.
The White House says that Syria’s future cannot include President Bashar Assad.
White House spokesman Jay Carney says the U.S. views Syria’s future as being a post-Assad future. But he says it’s up to the Syrian opposition to decide which elements of Assad’s regime could be included in a transitional government.
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