2 prep for fall of Assad

U.S.,Turkey team up to aid rebels, refugees

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird talks with Syrian refugees Saturday at a camp in Mafraq, Jordan, where he pledged $6.5 million more in aid for Jordan’s efforts to help displaced Syrians.
Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird talks with Syrian refugees Saturday at a camp in Mafraq, Jordan, where he pledged $6.5 million more in aid for Jordan’s efforts to help displaced Syrians.

INTERACTIVE

Uprising in Syria

— Turkey and the United States agreed Saturday to accelerate preparations for the possible fall of Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, creating a formal bilateral team to manage assistance to the opposition, to provide aid to fleeing refugees and to plan for worstcase outcomes that include a chemical-weapons attack.

At a news conference in Turkey, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that with the situation in Syria growing more dire, as the battle for Aleppo continues to rage, it was time to create a nerve center for information sharing and planning.

They said a unified task force with intelligence, military and political leaders from both countries would be formed immediately to track Syria’s present and plan for its future.

“What the minister and I agreed to was to have very intensive operational planning,” Clinton said. “We have been closely coordinating over the course of this conflict, but now we need to get into the real details.”

Clinton, who also announced an additional $5.5 million in humanitarian assistance for refugees, left open the possibility of setting up a no-fly zone, suggesting that the new planning team assigned to perform an “intense analysis” of all options could be a precursor to more direct assistance. But she stopped short of describing specific plans for helping Syria’s opposition fighters now, or the timing.

The day after protesters in Aleppo chanted, “Arm us with anti-aircraft weapons,” U.S. officials said the United States remained concerned about providing weapons or air support because it could draw a violent response, not just from Syria, but also from Russia, Iran and other of Assad’s allies that have strongly opposed direct foreign intervention to topple the government.

Hinting at fears of a wider war, Clinton said Saturday that the goal is to hasten the removal of Assad but “not in a way that produces even more death, injury and destruction.”

The U.S. and Turkey agreed on the need to plan for “the horrible event” that chemical weapons are used, Clinton said.

“What would that mean in terms of response, humanitarian and medical emergency assistance and, of course, what needs to be done to secure those stocks from ever being used or falling into the wrong hands?” Clinton said.

In July, Syria’s foreign ministry spokesman threatened the use of chemical and biological weapons in case of a foreign attack, assuring that the government would never use them against its own citizens. It was the first acknowledgment that Syria possesses weapons of mass destruction, something that’s long been suspected.

Later, the Syrian government attempted to back away from the announcement and revert to its previous position of neither confirming nor denying the existence of unconventional weapons.

Syria is believed to have nerve agents as well as mustard gas, Scud missiles capable of delivering lethal chemicals and a variety of advanced conventional arms, including portable anti-aircraft missiles.

Turkey is a natural hub for any kind of action in Syria. A former Syrian ally, it declared its allegiance with the rebels; many Syrian opposition groups are based in Turkey; and its Syrian border has become the main distribution point for weapons and assistance to the rebels, who have opened an on-again, off-again supply corridor from the border to Aleppo.

On Saturday, Davutoglu spoke more forcefully than Clinton on the need for action. Describing the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo and the plight of refugees fleeing on roads under attack from Syrian forces, he said: “The international community needs to take some very decisive steps to stop this.”

But in practice, analysts said, the U.S. and Turkey, along with a wider group of allies known as the Friends of Syria, continue to hold back. Saturday’s announcement still amounts to a policy of life support, some argue, giving enough help to keep the rebel movement alive and minimizing intervention while figuring out what to do next.

“The friends of Syria have developed a stake in making sure the opposition is simply not wiped out,” said Ilter Turan, an international relations professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul. “That becomes the ruler to measure this by.”

After 17 months of conflict and at least five months of the U.S. focus on “nonlethal assistance,” some signs of international help have, in fact, recently been seen. More rebel commanders in Syria have satellite phones and ways to mask their communications. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been leading the effort to arm Assad’s opponents, and U.S. intelligence officials have helped select recipients, according to U.S. officials.

Rebels and activists say such assistance so far has been nowhere near enough, in quantity or substance.

“We don’t want food or money; all we need are weapons. We are running low,” said Abu Mohammed, a rebel brigade commander in Aleppo, where fighting continued to rage Saturday. “We need antiaircraft missiles, and we have a big need for live ammunition.”

The meeting between Turkey and the U.S. was part of a flurry of diplomatic activity that underlines the severity of the crisis and the fears of escalating war.

Arab foreign ministers plan to meet today in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, to discuss developments in Syria and to consider selecting a replacement for Kofi Annan, the United Nations-Arab League envoy who resigned this month. And on Thursday, Iran, Syria’s main ally, hosted its own meeting of 30 countries to discuss Syria — another sign that the world’s powers see Syria as a proxy for wider battles.

On Saturday, a high-ranking diplomat told Iranian news media that the country had evacuated hundreds of its citizens from Syria.

“In the past few days, we have succeeded in transferring some of these dear people back to our Islamic republic,” said Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Mohammad Raouf Sheibani.

The move comes after the recent kidnapping of 48 Iranians, who Iran says are pilgrims but Syrian rebels accuse of being members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

In the meantime, the war grinds on. Syria’s state-run news agency reported that rebels had captured one of its television crews in Damascus, the latest indication that at least some in the opposition consider all supporters of the government their enemies.

Gunmen detonated backto-back roadside bombs and clashed Saturday with police in central Damascus in attacks that caused no damage but highlighted the ability of rebels to breach the intense security near Assad’s power bases.

The apparently coordinated blasts point to the increasing use of guerrilla-style operations in the capital to undermine the government’s claims of having full control over Damascus. It also suggests that rebel cells have established a Damascus network capable of evading Assad’s intelligence agents and slipping through security cordons.

On the capital’s northern edge, Syrian forces pounded the suburb of al-Tal with mortars and artillery shells in the third-consecutive day of government barrages, said Mohammed Saeed, an activist in al-Tal. He said they were using helicopters to strafe the area, adding that two hospitals were hit.

“The situation is very grave, and the town is completely besieged,” he said.

Activists also told Reuters that Syrian and Jordanian troops had clashed near the border as refugees tried to cross, reflecting rising tensions in the area where Syria’s prime minister recently defected.

After Canada’s foreign minister saw a refugee tent city, he pledged $6.5 million in additional aid to Jordan in its efforts to help displaced Syrians; he called the worsening situation in neighboring Syria “tremendously horrifying.”

John Baird praised Jordan, calling it an “incredible example to the world” on the front lines of the Syrian crisis, saying that the country “should not stand alone.”

“Jordan is committed to helping the Syrian people at their greatest hour of need, and Canada is proud to support you as you welcome tens of thousands of Syrian refugees across your borders,” Baird said at a joint news conference with his Jordanian counterpart, Nasser Judeh in the capital Amman, where he made the aid announcement.

Jordan hosts 150,000 displaced Syrians, more than any other country.

Information for this article was contributed by Damien Cave, Dalal Mawad, Hwaida Saad and Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times and by Matthew Lee, Albert Aji, Brian Murphy, Zeina Karam and Dale Gavlak of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/12/2012

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