[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
WORLD WAR III Title: Russia Rejects U.S. Accusation of Arms for Syria Repression Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejected U.S. accusations that it’s sending arms for use against Syrian civilians and said his country is simply fulfilling its contractual obligations. “We are completing previously signed and paid-for contracts,” Lavrov said during a press conference in Tehran today with his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi. “All these contracts have to do exclusively with air-defense systems.” Russia was only supplying “what Syria might need in case of a military attack from outside.” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday that she was “concerned by the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria, which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically.” Russia is repairing about 20 Mi-24 helicopters sold to Syria during the Soviet era, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg today. The U.S. and United Nations say the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad is using helicopter gunships as it increases the tempo of military operations against the opposition. After 15 months of conflict, the UN says its two- month old cease-fire is failing to hold and that massacres are being committed against Sunni civilians. Lavrov said Russia doesn’t want to see Syria “fall into pieces.” Iran’s Salehi told reporters that Iran and Russia have similar views regarding the conflict in Syria, which he added needs to be dealt with by Syrians rather than outsiders. “We have confronted the Russians about stopping their continued arms shipments to Syria,” Clinton said yesterday. “They have, from time to time, said that we shouldn’t worry; everything they’re shipping is unrelated to their actions internally. That’s patently untrue.” As Russia and Western states continued to dispute what action to take on Syria, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that the imposition of no-fly zones were being considered as “one of the options.” The comments came a day after UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous was asked whether Syria was in a state of civil war. He told reporters: “Yes, I think we can say that.” UN observers are continuing to try to reach the Syrian town of Haffa -- which Western officials said may be the site of a planned massacre. Yesterday they were chased away by a mob throwing stones and metal rods. Shots were fired at three vehicles as they headed out, the UN said. The observers have been trying since June 7 to reach the town, which they said was besieged amid heavy fighting. Government forces shelled the al-Khaldiyeh neighborhood in Homs today as heavy clashes continued in the city, the U.K.- based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mailed statement. A video posted on Youtube today showed what purported to be images from Homs, including smoke rising from the city and loud explosions. The authenticity of the videos couldn’t be verified. Assad’s attacks on what began as a peaceful opposition movement pushed Syria toward sectarian violence pitting the majority Sunnis against the Alawite leadership in a patchwork nation of ethnic and religious groups. That’s left at least 10,000 dead, the UN estimates. Another 36 government soldiers killed in the fighting were buried, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported today, while the Syrian Observatory said 23 soldiers died yesterday. Insurgents, deploying guerrilla tactics such as ambushes and targeting army generals for assassination, are grabbing control of territory. Pro-government forces are retaliating with increasing brutality, as shown in the massacres of Sunni civilians around Houla and in the farming village of Qubeir. “The government of Syria lost some large chunks of territories and several cities to the opposition and wants to retake control of these areas,” the UN’s Ladsous said yesterday. “So now we have confirmed reports not only of the use of tanks and artillery but also attack helicopters.” The opposition, a loosely connected group of defectors and other dissidents known as the Free Syrian Army, is gaining access to better weapons seeping across borders, according to two UN officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. Gulf nations such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia are furnishing the supplies, with the U.S. looking the other way, the officials said. Lavrov accused the U.S. of helping to provide weapons to the Syrian rebels, according to a translation of his comments into Farsi to reporters in Tehran. The Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow later said that the Farsi translation of Lavrov’s comments were inaccurate and that the foreign minister did not accuse the U.S. of arming the Syrian opposition. The U.S. “regularly delivers such special equipment to the region, including a recent delivery to one of the countries of the Persian Gulf, which Americans for some reason think is nothing out of the ordinary,” he said, according to the Russian news agency TASS. Near the border with Turkey, there are signs that government forces have been massing in the past day or two around Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and financial center, Clinton said yesterday at a conference in Washington. As the situation degenerates, there will be more instances in which the opposition breaks away and the state intervenes in full force to try and snuff them out, according to Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a policy group. The failure of the Annan-negotiated cease-fire is prompting other nations to consider options, such as UN-backed sanctions and humanitarian corridors for civilian aid and safety that would have to be defended with military force. “The creation of safe-havens has become inevitable and is relatively imminent,” Tabler said in a telephone interview. “It’s not a question of if but when.” The establishment of civilian havens, which has been compared to Bosnia in the 1990s, remains a much-disputed idea. It would require a military presence to enforce, and Russia has repeatedly resisted any form of outside intervention.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Clinton Says Russia Will Sacrifice Its Interests In Syria Unless... (#0)
By Associated Press, WASHINGTON — Clinton says Russia will sacrifice its interests in Syria unless it acts constructively now. Developing... Never swear "allegiance" to anything other than the 'right to change your mind'!
I guess that Reset Button Bull shite is over now. Russia Syria News About 220,000,000 results (0.35 seconds) RUSSIAN WARNING SHOTS AS SYRIAN CONFLICT THREATENS TO DEGENERATE INTO WORLD WAR Posted on June 11, 2012 The nature of the Syrian crisis has changed. The process of destabilization that was to open the path for legal military intervention by the Atlantic Alliance has failed. Removing its mask, the United States has publicly announced the possibility of attacking Syria without the approval of the Security Council, as it also did in Kosovo. Washington must be pretending not to have noticed that the Russia of Vladimir Putin is not that of Boris Yeltsin. After being assured of Chinese support, Moscow literally fired two warning shots in the direction of Washington. The continuing violations of international law by NATO and the GCC threaten to unleash a global conflict. Noting USSAtv had Syria, then Russia arming Syria, then the Blind Chinese Activist's home......We going head to head with both China/Russia at the same time? And how do we then get out of the Afghans? Russia prepares army for Syrian deployment... By: sealion on: 13.06.2012 [15:19 ] (238 reads) Russia prepares army for Syrian deployment... Given the worsening crisis in Syria, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper reported that the Russian army is apparently being prepared for a mission in Syria. Citing anonymous sources in the military leadership, the newspaper said that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the general staff to work out a plan for military operations outside Russia, including in Syria.
|
|
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|