WarSclerotic

EU sides with Russia’s Putin, urges against US ‘military solution’ in Syria | JPost | Israel News.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia- Europe’s top officials warned against a military response in Syria on Thursday, aligning themselves more closely with Russian President Vladimir Putin than President Barack Obama in how best to respond to the chemical attack in the Syrian civil war.

While describing the Aug. 21 attack near Damascus, in which an estimated 1,400 people died, as “abhorrent” and a crime against humanity, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said a military strike would not help resolve the crisis.

“There is no military solution to the Syrian conflict,” Van Rompuy told reporters ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 countries this week in St Petersburg, when the 2-1/2-year-old conflict in Syria is expected to dominate debate along with discussion on the global economy.

“Only a political solution can end the terrible bloodshed, grave violations of human rights and the far-reaching destruction of Syria,” Van Rompuy said.

“While respecting the recent calls for action, we underscore at the same time the need to move forward with addressing the Syrian crisis through the UN process.”

His position, supported by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, would appear to set the European Union at odds with the United States, since Obama has said he is prepared to launch military strikes once he has approval from the US Congress, where votes are expected next week.

It also suggests internal divisions within the European Union. France, which with Britain is the most influential of the EU’s 28 member states on foreign policy, has said it will support any military action taken by Washington.

British Prime Minister David Cameron was also keen to support military intervention, but he lost a parliamentary vote on the issue last week and Britain will not take part.

EUROPEAN CAUTION

The position set out by Van Rompuy and Barroso effectively calls for the international community to work through the United Nations in determining the response to Syrian President Bashar Assad and his government.

That is not dissimilar to the line adopted by Putin, a firm ally of Assad, who has condemned the US rush to action and goaded US officials for the mistakes made in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Putin has also accused NATO of exceeding the bounds of a 2011 UN mandate for intervention in Libya.

Van Rompuy said he had no reason to doubt the credibility of the evidence presented by the United States indicating Assad’s forces released the chemical weapons. But he said it was essential to wait until UN experts had concluded an on-the-ground investigation into the attack with a report.

“I look forward to the information the UN secretary general will share with us on this matter later today,” he said. “It is important that at least a preliminary report is released as early as possible.”

EU foreign ministers meet in Vilnius on Friday and Saturday, when they will discuss the situation in Syria, among other issues. US Secretary of State John Kerry will join them and is expected to push the case for military action.

While France has made clear its support for a U”Only a political solution can end the terrible bloodshed, grave violations of human rights and the far-reaching destruction of Syria,” Van Rompuy said.S-led response, and Denmark has given similar indications, most other EU member states have either not spoken up or privately have expressed reservations about an armed retaliation.

Barroso said diplomacy, including renewed efforts towards a Syria peace conference in Geneva, was the only way forward.

Report: Hezbollah said Assad ‘lost his nerve,’ ordered gas attack – Israel News, Ynetnews.

German intel agency says intercepted phone call during which top Hezbollah figure tells Iranian Embassy in Damascus Syrian president ordered deadly gas attack on rebel strongholds

Reuters

A Hezbollah official has said Syrian President Bashar Assad ordered a poison gas attack last month and that it considered the move a mistake which showed he was losing his grip, according to German intelligence.

Participants at a confidential meeting of German lawmakers on Monday said the head of the BND foreign intelligence agency told them it had intercepted a phone call believed to be between a high-ranking member of the Lebanese Shiite terror group and the Iranian Embassy in Damascus.

“The BND referred to a phone call they had heard between a Hezbollah official and the Iranian embassy in which he spoke about Assad having ordered the attack,” one of the participants told Reuters.

In the phone call, the Hezbollah official says Assad’s order for the attack was a mistake and that he was losing his nerve, the participants reported the BND briefing as saying. Both Iran and Hezbollah support Assad.

A BND spokesman declined to comment on Monday’s briefing, saying German intelligence speaks only to the government and to parliamentary committees on highly sensitive matters.

A Hezbollah spokesman was not available for comment.

Video courtesy of jn1.tv

The US government says about 1,400 people, hundreds of them children, died near Damascus on August 21 in what it says was a sarin gas attack by the Syrian government.

US President Barack Obama is seeking Congressional backing for taking military action against Assad and Frace has also called for strikes. But British Prime Minister David Cameron failed last week to win parliamentary backing for any action against Syria.

France’s military and foreign intelligence services submitted to French lawmakers on Monday a report suggesting that forces loyal to Assad in the country’s two-year-old civil war, had carried out the attack.

Victims of chemical attack (Photo: Reuters)

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Syrian leader’s most powerful ally, said he could not entirely rule out Russian backing for military action against Damascus if it could be proved that Assad was really behind the attack.

Moscow has suggested al Qaeda-linked rebels may have carried out the gassing.

Syria will top the agenda of world leaders’ talks in the Russian city of St. Petersburg later this week.

One participant at the Berlin meeting said German lawmakers of all parties were skeptical about a military intervention in Syria and had quizzed the BND over faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq used to justify the US-led invasion of 2003. No such weapons were found.

In 2011 Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported Iraqi defector Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed “curveball”, had made up claims told to German intelligence officials that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to help topple his government.

The information from Janabi formed the basis of a 2003 speech by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell before the United Nations Security Council.

Some German lawmakers also expressed concern that German intelligence on Syria could be used by the United States to justify military intervention without a UN mandate.

Berlin has ruled out participation in a military intervention in Syria, which would be deeply unpopular at home.

Last month a German naval reconnaissance vessel, the Oker, sailed from Sardinia to the eastern Mediterranean. German media reported that the boat is fitted with technology to eavesdrop on activities in Syria.

Hezbollah prepares for US strike; Russia lashes at rebels – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Lebanese sources say ten thousand Hezbollah militants gird for Damascus’ defense in case of US strike, pending Iranian go-ahead. Russian report claims rebels behind Aleppo sarin attack

Ynet

Russia counters with its own chemical report, Hezbollah prepares for strike: Moscow accused the Syrian rebels of using chemical weapons in an attack on the town of Khan al-Assal near Aleppo on March 19.

At the same time, Hezbollah is reportedly preparing for two tasks: Preventing Damascus from falling in rebel hands during expected US strike, and firing toward Israel.

The Saudi newspaper al-Okaz reported on Thursday that according to Lebanese sources in Beirut Hezbollah is readying for the collapse of the Syrian army following an American attack and is therefore planning to stand ground in Damascus with ten thousands combatants.

Aleppo desolation (Photo: AP)

However, such a move – as well as firing missiles in the north of the country – will only be commenced with direct instructions from Iran, said the report.

Recently, the Shiite group has tuned down its involvement in the Syrian civil war due to the severe criticism turned against it at home. On Wednesday, it was reported that a top official in the group admitted that Assad is responsible for the chemical massacre in Damascus’ suburbs.

Victims of chemical attack in Damascus (Photo: Reuters)

Moscow, as said, is standing in staunch support of its ally Assad, and turns a blaming finger at the Syrian rebels.

The Russian RT network reported that Russian specialists claimed that the shells found were improvised, and conjectured they were manufactured in northern Syria by rebel forces.

According to them, the shells contained sarin nerve gas, classified by the UN as a weapon of mass destruction.

The Russian Foreign Ministry declared that probing the evidence may aid the UN investigate that incident in which at least 26 civilians and Syrian army soldiers were killed, and 86 more were injured.

Meanwhile, the Syrian President’s Office political advisor, Bouthaina Shaaban, claimed that it was the Syrian opposition who perpetrated the August 21 chemical attack: “The opposition kidnapped men and children from villages in Latakia and brought them to the Gouta area near Damascus. There it used chemical weapons against them,” she said in an interview for Sky news in Arabic.

Earlier this week, UN Chief Ban Ki-moon stated that the UN inspectors are expected to return to Syria in order to investigate additional attacked suspected to have involved chemical arms.

Meanwhile, the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee voted on Wednesday to give President Barack Obama the authority to use military force against Syria in response to a deadly chemical attack in Damascus on August 21.

The Senate committee vote was 10-7, with one senator voting present. The full Senate is expected to vote on the measure next week.

Regarding the proposal for military action in Syria, President Obama stated on Wednesday during a press conference in Sweden: “I believe that Congress will approve it. I think it’s very important that Congress say that we mean what we say.”

He stressed that “My credibility’s not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line, and America and Congress’ credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important. And when those videos first broke and you saw images of over 400 children subjected to gas, everybody expressed outrage. How can this happen in this modern world? Well, it happened because a government chose to deploy these deadly weapons on civilian populations.

“And so the question is how credible is the international community when it says this is an international norm that has to be observed? The question is how credible is Congress when it passes a treaty saying we have to forbid the use of chemical weapons? And I do think that we have to act because if we don’t, we are effectively saying that even though we may condemn it and issue resolutions and so forth and so on, somebody who is not shamed by resolutions can continue to act with impunity.”