DOHA, Qatar - The major international backers of Syrian opposition agreed Saturday to provide “urgently all the necessary materiel and equipment” to rebels fighting the government of President Bashar Assad.
The agreement did not specify what kind of weapons would be sent or which supporters would provide what. But officials attending the Doha conference said that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are prepared to quickly supply shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles and armor-piercing shells to be used against Assad’s air force and tanks.
Despite offering a series of pledges of coordination and increased aid in recent months, the rebels’ backers have been divided and inconsistent in acting on their promises. But officials insist the new pledge is firm and specific in terms of both quantity and quality of supplies.
“Something different happened today,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said after a four-hour meeting of foreign ministers from 11 Western and Middle Eastern governments. Because of Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons and the large-scale intervention of Hezbollah and Iranian militia fighters in Syria’s civil war, he said, “we have decided that we have no choice … but to provide greater assistance.”
Unless the bloodshed in Syria stops, the region could descend into a chaotic sectarian conflict, Kerry said, as he called for an urgent political resolution to the war that has dragged on for two years and claimed 93,000 lives.
“The continued bloodshed at the hands of the Assad regime and the increasing involvement of Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, threaten the very prospects of a political settlement and of peace,” Kerry said, adding that the U.S. and other nations are not backing the rebels to seek a military victory in Syria.
“We do so to … find a political settlement,” he said. “Reliable civilian governance and a stronger and more effective armed opposition will better enable the opposition to be able to provide the counterweight to the initiative of Assad to reach out across borders … to bring Iranians and to bring Hezbollah - again, a terrorist organization - to the table.”
Kerry blamed Hezbollah and Assad for undermining efforts to negotiate a settlement and establish a transitional government.
“We’re looking at a very dangerous situation” that has transformed “into a much more volatile, potentially explosive situation that could involve the entire region,” Kerry said.
Although the rebels have been receiving arms from Persian Gulf nations, reportedly including a recent influx of surface-to-air missiles from Libya via Qatar, officials said the Doha decision will ensure a continuous, coordinated flow and procedures to ensure the weapons will be kept from Islamic militants. Officials from participating governments spoke about their private discussions in Doha and in other recent talks on the condition of anonymity.
A European official described Saturday’s decision as a “collective answer” to desperate appeals from Gen. Salim Idriss, head of the opposition’s Supreme Military Council, in the wake of recent rebel defeats.
The session was the fourth time the 11 nations that make up the Friends of Syria group - the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - have gathered this year. But since their last meeting, barely a month ago in Amman, Jordan, the situation has turned sharply against the rebels.
First France and Britain, and early this month the United States, said their separate investigations had concluded that Assad had used chemical weapons. President Barack Obama said a “red line” had been crossed, and that the United States would provide direct military support to rebel fighters. More important, Iranian and Hezbollah intervention inflamed fears that Syria’s civil conflict would spill beyond its borders to become a regional sectarian war.
The escalation of fighting and increasing rebel losses also set back plans to hold peace negotiations this summer on a post-Assad transition government.
Agreement was not unanimous in the Saturday meeting, and officials said Germany led a small minority opposed to the provision of arms to the rebels on the grounds that it would intensify Syria’s humanitarian crisis and promote, rather than restrain, sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East. The region’s Sunni powers back the largely Sunni opposition, while Iran and Hezbollah, who support Assad, are Shiite, as is Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
But others were harsh in their judgment of the group’s previous ineffectiveness. “All of the Arab and international efforts to end the Syrian tragedy have failed, rendering the international community a helpless observer that cannot deal with the situation,” Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani said as he opened the group’s formal session.
“It’s not in the talking about it, it’s in the doing,” Kerry said at a news conference. “Not anything we say today” will change the situation, he said. “It’s what happens in the days and months ahead. I hope not too many months. What happened here today is different, because the situation on the ground is different.”
Kerry said he would not go into specifics about which country would provide what equipment and that each nation would make its own decisions. He said the Obama administration will consider the contributions of others in deciding what its own contribution should be. Officials said earlier that the administration would initially provide light weaponry and ammunition.
In a joint declaration, the foreign ministers said their decisions were designed specifically “to change the balance of power on the ground.”
They also agreed to increase humanitarian assistance to nearly 5 million Syrians who have been internally displaced or have fled to neighboring countries.
DAMASCUS, ALEPPO
Also on Saturday, Syrian government forces stepped up their attack against rebel strongholds north of the capital, Damascus, while opposition fighters declared their own offensive in the country’s largest city, Aleppo.
The fighting in Damascus came as the Syrian government announced salary increases for state employees and members of the military, days after the Syrian currency dipped to a record low of 210 pounds to the dollar compared with 47 when the crisis began more than two years ago. The raise also covered pensions.
Activists also reported heavy shelling of many districts north of Damascus, apparently an attempt to cut links between rebel-held districts that have served as launching pads for operations against the capital. Three children, including two from the same family, have been killed in shelling of the outlying district of Qaboun since Friday, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on an extensive network of activists in Syria.
The Observatory said the neighborhood was being attacked from several different sides, while the shelling has caused structural damage and started fires. Activists from Qaboun posted on Facebook that government forces had deployed new tanks to reinforce its positions outside the neighborhood, and the bombardment had brought buildings down.
The Observatory said rebels targeted a police academy in the nearby Barzeh area Saturday, pushing back against a government attempt to storm the neighborhood. One rebel was killed in overnight fighting, it said.
Rebels and government also clashed in and around the northern city of Aleppo, where government forces launched an offensive earlier this month. Activists reported clashes in southern and western neighborhoods.
The Observatory also said rebels pounded a military academy in the area, causing a fire in the compound. No casualties were immediately reported.
In Rashideen, rebel forces have pushed government forces out from parts of the neighborhood, according to the local Aleppo Media Center network and posts on Facebook.
Also Saturday, Syrian forces fired a dozen shells that landed in a northern Lebanese border town, causing a panic among residents, the Lebanese news agency reported.
SECRET TRAINING
CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have been secretly training Syrian rebels with antitank and anti-aircraft weapons since late last year, months before Obama approved plans to begin directly arming them, according to U.S. officials and rebel commanders.
The covert U.S. training at bases in Jordan and Turkey has involved fighters from the Free Syrian Army, a loose confederation of rebel groups that the Obama administration has promised to back with expanded military assistance, said a U.S. official.
The number of rebels given U.S. instruction in Jordan and Turkey could not be determined, but in Jordan, the training involves 20 to 45 insurgents at a time, a rebel commander said.
U.S. special operations teams selected the trainees over the last year when the U.S. military set up regional supply lines to provide the rebels with nonlethal assistance, including uniforms, radios and medical aid.
The two-week courses include training with Russian-designed 14.5mm antitank rifles, antitank missiles and 23mm antiaircraft weapons, according to a rebel commander in the Syrian province of Dara who helps oversee weapons acquisitions in the secret program.
The training began in November at a new American base in the desert in southwestern Jordan, he said. So far, about 100 rebels from Dara have attended four courses, and rebels from Damascus, the Syrian capital, have attended three, he said.
Some 900 U.S. military personnel, including dozens staying on from joint military drills, also are in Jordan to bolster its defense and prevent the Syrian civil war from spreading across its border, Jordan’s prime minister said Saturday.
It was the first time a Jordanian official disclosed publicly the numbers of U.S. troops in the Arab kingdom, sent there in recent weeks for military exercises and other deployments.
Abdullah Ensour told reporters Saturday that 200 of the personnel were experts training Jordanians to handle a chemical attack. The remaining 700 are manning a Patriot missile defense system and F-16 fighter jets, which Washington deployed this month in case the Syrian war worsens.
“The number of U.S. forces in Jordan is small and not intended to be in preparation for a war on Syria,” Ensour said.
Jordan is concerned its larger northern neighbor would use chemical weapons against Syrian refugee camps in Jordan and other neighboring countries, or that the stockpile may fall into the hands of al-Qaida or other militants if Assad loses control.
Jordan hosts the largest number of more than a half million displaced Syrians.
Information for this article was contributed by Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post; by Jamal Halaby and Sarah El Deeb of The Associated Press; and by David S. Cloud and Raja Abdulrahim of the Tribune Washington Bureau.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/23/2013