WarSclerotic

Protests erupt in Hama, eastern Syria as death toll rises.

  AMMAN – Thousands of Syrian Kurds demonstrated in the east of the country on Friday to demand an end to military actions that have killed hundreds of protesters, a Kurdish opposition leader said.

“The demonstrations are expanding in numbers,” Habib Ibrahim told Reuters, adding that demonstrations erupted in the provincial capital of Qamishli and in the smaller towns of Amouda and Derabasiyeh near the border with Turkey. The witness said pro-democracy demonstrators chanted “We want the overthrow of the regime.”

Syria defers run for seat of UN Rights Council

Thousands of people also converged on a square in the Syrian city of Hama for a pro-democracy demonstration, a witness said.

“I am moving among a huge crowd… They are coming from every direction,” said a witness in Hama where the military crushed an Islamist-led uprising in 1982.

Earlier Friday,a  United Nations human rights office in Geneva said the death toll in Syria may be as high as 850 and thousands of demonstrators have been arrested during a two-month military crackdown.

“We again call on the government to exercise restraint, to cease use of force and mass arrests to silence opponents,” Rupert Colville, spokesman of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news briefing.

The toll of 700-to-850 dead, based on information provided by human rights activists, was “quite likely to be genuine”, he added.

Syria has blamed most of the violence on “terrorist groups” backed by Islamists and foreign agitators. But a rights campaigner, speaking ahead of Friday prayers that have become a rallying point for protesters, said President Bashar Assad has ordered troops not to fire on pro-democracy demonstrators.

A high-level UN human rights mission was preparing to go to Syria, as well as neighboring countries, but had not yet received a reply from Damascus, according to Colville.

“We hope to be ready to deploy as soon as we are granted access,” he said.

“We have many reports of use of snipers, use of tanks in a number of towns. The government is reporting that soldiers and police have been killed, that is why we want to get in there and see for ourselves,” he added.

Colville also voiced concern about arrest and torture of dissidents in Bahrain, including the death of four detainees while in custody, and announced that Yemen had accepted a visit by a UN human rights mission, suggesting a date of late June.

On Thursday, Syrian forces surrounded Hama, the scene of a bloody 1982 crackdown by the father of President Bashar Assad, and dispersed a rally in the second city of Aleppo, in the latest signs that the unrest could turn into a drawn-out, bloody revolt.

The Associated Press quoted a human rights activist saying troops backed by tanks had deployed around Hama, a central city in which then-president Hafez Assad killed some 20,000 people in putting down a Muslim Brotherhood insurrection.

In Aleppo, 2,000 students rallied at the city’s prestigious university in the first indication that the rebellion had reached the northern city.

Tanks advanced in the southern towns of Dael, Tafas, Jassem and al-Harra – just a few kilometers east of the Golan Heights – ahead of post-prayer Friday demonstrations that have become hallmarks of the so-called “Arab Spring.”

The Associated Press: Israeli soldiers train to shoot down missiles.

FILE – In this March 26, 2007 file photo, an image released by the Israel Aerospace Industries, an Israeli Arrow interceptor anti-tactical ballistic missile is test fired from an unknown location in Israel. For the first time, the Israel military on Thursday, May 12, 2011, allowed foreign journalists to enter the missile defense control room at the Palmachim air base to view simulations of aerial attacks and speak with the soldiers who would be responsible for pushing the intercept button.

PALMACHIM AIR BASE, Israel (AP) — Israel has put together a multilayered shield designed to intercept rockets and missiles capable of striking it from as close as the Gaza Strip and as far away as Iran, reflecting concern that future conflicts will target Israel’s civilian population centers.

At this sprawling air base in central Israel, soldiers in a fortified control room are training to activate a cornerstone of this shield — the Arrow missile defense system, meant to protect Israel from its enemy Iran’s expanding array of missiles.

The Arrow, produced jointly by state-run Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. and Chicago-based Boeing Co. at a cost of more than $1 billion, is being deployed in Israel after successful tests in both Israel and the U.S. It has not been tested in combat, but the system is already in its third generation, having been fine-tuned to deal with increasingly complicated threats.

The Arrow was designed to counter Iran’s Shahab ballistic missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and whose range of 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers), puts Israel well within striking distance. Despite Iranian denials, Israel is convinced Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

Threats also come from much closer to Israel.

In 2006, Israel fought a fierce monthlong war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, when Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets at Israel. That pointed up two stark facts: Israel had no tool to knock them down — neither did anyone else — and Israel’s civilian population, concentrated mostly along the nation’s Mediterranean coast, was increasingly vulnerable to attack.

In response, Israel has developed additional systems: “Magic Wand,” aimed at stopping intermediate-range missiles, and the “Iron Dome,” which shoots down rockets fired from short distances of just a few miles (kilometers) from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

Last month, Israel successfully introduced the Iron Dome and shot down several Palestinian-fired rockets from Gaza. Palestinian militants have fired thousands of crude, short-range weapons at Israel in recent years, and up to then the military had no answer except airstrikes after the fact.

The Arrow, first deployed in 2000, was the first brick in what Israel hopes will be a wall of protection against incoming rockets and missiles.

The Israel military on Thursday allowed foreign journalists to observe the Arrow missile defense control room at the Palmachim air base.

Entry is through a set of 3-inch-thick steel doors. The control center is reinforced against nuclear attack, a military official indicated.

An aerial map of the Middle East appears on each of a dozen screens around the room, where soldiers “intercept according to the type of threat,” said an officer identified only as Lt. Col. O, according to military regulations.

Soldiers are trained to cope with situations where as many as hundreds of rockets are fired simultaneously, said Maj. Tal Mast, a former Arrow commander who has spent 13 years in air defense and still trains twice a month as a reservist.

After detecting an incoming missile, soldiers have minutes at best and seconds at worst to assess what type of projectile it is, calculate its trajectory and decide whether it needs to be shot down or whether it might land in an open field or the sea, making interception unnecessary.

The computer system helps make the decisions.

An “X” on the screen designates an incoming missile as “irrelevant” — meaning it is not expected to hit anything and need not be shot down.

If the decision is to fire, a missile is dispatched from a transportable, trailer-mounted Arrow launcher with six missile tubes that can be reloaded in 15 to 20 minutes, officials said.

At one point in a drill, the screen showed two Scud missiles, designated by yellow triangles, homing in on central Israel from Lebanon, and two others from Syria. A blinking blue triangle, signifying the Arrow’s interceptor missile, homes in on one of the incoming missiles. Their paths cross, and both disappear from the screen. The other missiles, deemed nonthreatening, are allowed to continue on their course.

In real life, the “fire” button is a simple F2 stroke on the computer keyboard, Lt. Col. O said.

Syria arrests prominent rights activist, as US seeks more pressure on Assad.

Al Arabiya
Thursday, 12 May 2011

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, center in blue tie, arrives to lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier during Martyrs day in Kasiyoun mountain in Damascus, Syria. (AP photo)

Assad said to order troops not to fire on protesters as Washington issues warning.

Al Arabiya
Friday, 13 May 2011

A girl with a Syrian flag painted on her face during a demonstration against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. (File Photo)

‘Russia blocks UN report on Iran arms sales to Syria’.

  UNITED NATIONS – Russia is attempting to suppress a United Nations report that says Iran has been breaking a UN arms embargo by shipping weapons to Syria, Western diplomats said on Thursday.

“Russia has objected to the publication of the report as an official Security Council document,” a council diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Several other diplomats confirmed it.

“It’s obviously an attempt to protect (Syrian President) Bashar Assad,” who is coming under increasing international pressure over his violent crackdown on anti-government protesters, another council diplomat said.

The confidential report, obtained by Reuters, said most of Iran’s breaches of the embargo have been deliveries of weapons to Syria, which Western diplomats say were to be passed on to Lebanese and Palestinian militants.

The report by the UN Security Council’s so-called Panel of Experts, a newly formed committee that reports on compliance with four rounds of UN sanctions imposed on Iran for refusing to halt its nuclear enrichment program, also says Tehran flouts the sanctions as it continues to develop its atomic program.

Diplomats said Russia offered a procedural justification for objecting to the publication of the report — it should first be discussed by the Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee before being released to the public.

“Eventually they’ll have to give in but we don’t know how long it will take,” a diplomat said.

Russia is able to block the Iran report because decisions about such reports are made by consensus among the 15 members of the Security Council.

Russia’s decision to block the report comes as diplomats said Britain and France were attempting to revive plans to have the Security Council condemn Syria for its crackdown against demonstrators.

A previous attempt failed after Russia, China and India objected to the proposed condemnation.

A spokesman for Russia’s UN mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has prevented the publication of similar U. expert panel reports on North Korea and Sudan, two countries that Beijing routinely tries to shield from Security Council criticism, for as long as half a year.

Russia has long acted as a kind of protector for Iran on the council, working hard to dilute the four sanctions resolutions on Iran between 2006 and 2010 before voting in favor of them. It also has close commercial ties to the Islamic Republic.

A senior Russian diplomat was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying on Thursday that Iran’s Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant will be fully operational within weeks.