Iran slams Turkey’s request for missiles

— Iran lashed out Friday at Turkey for requesting that NATO supply it with Patriot surface-to-air missiles to deploy along the border with Syria, denouncing the step by Ankara as counterproductive.

Iranian parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani made the remarks after a visit to Damascus, a show of support by Tehran to its increasingly diplomatically isolated ally.

“The internal crisis in Syria cannot be solved through the deployment of such weapons,” Larijani, who is close to the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, said at a news conference in Beirut where he went after leaving Syria.

Turkey’s request earlier this week follows several incidents in which violence has spilled across the border from the civil war in Syria, frequently mortar rounds falling a short distance inside. Patriots would be useful in intercepting ballistic missiles - a much more serious but still hypothetical threat.

NATO said Wednesday that it will consider the request “without delay.” The Syrian Foreign Ministry also criticized the Turkish move, calling it “a new provocative step.”

A NATO delegation will visit southern Turkey next week to decide where the missiles can be positioned, NTV television said Friday, citing unidentified government officials. Six Patriot batteries may be deployed in Turkey, according to NTV.

Larijani, who met Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus earlier Friday, said Iran was seeking a peaceful solution to the war in Syria.

“The difference between us and the others when it comes to Syria is that the others want to impose democracy through weapons,” he said. “Iran cannot accept or support such a way.”

“I don’t think democracy can be achieved through rocket-propelled grenades,” he added. Iran is Assad’s strongestally in the region, and anti-government activists accuse Tehran of sending both weapons and fighters to Syria.

Syria’s conflict broke out in March 2011 with an uprising against Assad’s regime, inspired by other Arab Spring revolts, but evolved into a civil war that has since killed more than 40,000 people, according to activists.

In violence around Syria on Friday, Islamic extremists, including members of the al-Qaida-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra group, battled with pro-government Kurdish gunmen in the northern town of Ras al-Ayan near the border with Turkey, activists said.

Kurdish activist Mustafa Osso and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had no reports ofcasualties.

The Islamic militants entered the town earlier this month and have since clashed almost daily with the Kurdish gunmen.

The Islamic militants, who are fighting on the side of the rebels, have played a bigger role in the Syrian conflict in recent months and many openly say they want to set up an Islamic state. The opposition is split, with some groups strongly opposed to the influence of extremists.

In Damascus, regime forces shelled the neighborhoods of Tadamon and Hajar Aswad, where rebels and government troops have clashed for weeks, and also raided the central Damascus neighborhood of Bab Sreijeh, arresting several people there, said the Observatory.

In the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, activists said a bomb blast killed four people and seriously wounded a member of a faction that has backed Assad in the country’s bitter civil war.

The explosion late Thursday was a bomb placed under the car of a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, the Palestinian group said. It blamed the rebel Free Syrian Army for the attack.

Elsewhere, the Observatory said the body of Syrian novelist Mohammed Rashid Roweily was found late Thursday in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, nearly two months after he was kidnapped.

State TV said Roweily was“liquidated by terrorists” - a term the government uses for the rebels. Syrian authorities deny there is a popular uprising in the country and say the rebels are backed by foreign powers that seek to destroy the country.

Ruwiely, 65, was once the representative of Arab Writers’ Union in Deir el-Zour and had written several novels. The Observatory said his decomposed body was found along with those of four others, including a retired army officer. All were kidnapped around the same time.

Journalist Bassil Toufic Youssef, who worked for state TV, was shot dead outside his house in the capital Thursday, the state SANA news agency said.

In other developments, Qatar, which has backed Syria’s rebels in the conflict, invited a newly formed opposition coalition to appoint an ambassador to the Persian Gulf state, the Qatari news agency reported.

The six-national oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council and the European Union’s 27 foreign ministers recognized the Syrian coalition. Last week, France became the first Western nation to officially recognize the council. President Barack Obama said the U.S. isn’t ready to recognize the group as a “government in exile” or to arm it.

Information for this article was contributed by Zeina Karam and Albert Aji of The Associated Press and by Selcan Hacaoglu of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 8 on 11/24/2012

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