Try this one; you'll need to scroll down the page to find the video.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/06/white-house-assad-losing-his-grip_n_1747884.html?ref=topbar

US and Turkey to set up Syria crisis working group



US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said a working group will be set up with Turkey to plan a joint response to the Syrian crisis.

She visited Istanbul to discuss how best to support opposition to President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

Mrs Clinton said the US was increasing aid for Syrian refugees - more than 50,000 of whom are in Turkey.

Bethany Bell reports.


US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said a working group will be set up with Turkey to plan a joint response to the Syrian crisis. She visited Istanbul to discuss how best to support opposition to President Bashar al-Assad's rule. Mrs Clinton said the US was increasing aid for Syrian refugees - more than 50,000 of whom are in Turkey. Bethany Bell reports.

Where was all this concern for refugees when Syria was being flooding with people fleeing Iraq? The region, and much of the world, see the US for what it really is... a destroyer of once proud nations and instigator of Jewish and Saudi interests.

Well, Ben, you know the old line:




I would only add that Turkish and Iranian interests are also involved. As always, a vexing and complicated state of affairs with regional and extra-regional powers bidding for influence and power. Please keep in mind that even if the USA were to magically disappear from the equation, these entities-and perhaps others, China -would nevertheless join the contest in a battle of wills just the same.

it's about the oil. america didn't see an opportunity when iraqi refugees were flooding, so "sorry." now, even though the taxpayers footing the bill get zilch in compensation, we are going in to make wealthy campaign donating oil companies wealthier, thereby keeping certain politician's campaign coffers full.

we are sewing up the region, only there is no real "we" it's all large corporations that benefit and related industries. they don't even hire americans to work the fields in those places anymore - they get the cheapest labor from the cheapest parts of the world.

Here's another little reported issue that may have vast geo-political implications for the region.



By Jonathan Marcus
BBC Diplomatic Correspondent

Syria's Kurdish activists have begun to take control of towns near the border with Turkey

In any assessment of the potential winners and losers from the political chaos in Syria, the country's Kurdish minority could be among the winners.

The Kurds make up a little over 10% of the population. Long marginalised by the Alawite-dominated government, they are largely concentrated in north-eastern Syria, up towards the Turkish border.

Aaron David Miller, a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, believes that the Kurds could be one of the main beneficiaries of the demise of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

"Syria is coming apart, and there's not much chance it will be reassembled with the kind of centralised authority we saw under the Assads."

For the Syrian Kurds, whom he describes as "part of the largest single ethnic grouping in the region that lacks a state", there is "an opportunity to create more autonomy and respect for Kurdish rights".

"They have the motivation, opportunity, and their Kurdish allies in Iraq and Turkey to encourage them. But what will hold them back is Turkey's determination to prevent a mini-statelet in Syria along with the Kurds own internal divisions," he says.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

The Kurdish factor in the Syrian crisis will prove to be as significant as the Kurdish question in Iraq”

Prof Fawaz Gerges
London School of Economics

"It is unlikely," he believes, "that Syria's Kurds will be able to establish a separate entity in Syria. Nor will the United States, nor the international community accept that."

"At the same time, the several dimensions of the Kurdish problem - the Iraqi Kurds' growing determination to remain a separate entity; Turkish determination to avoid another mini-Kurdistan along the Syrian-Iraqi border; and the issue of the PKK, the armed Kurdish insurgents fighting the Turkish Army - will create a real flashpoint."

There in a nutshell is the scale of the problem.

The Kurds' future in Syria will have an important bearing upon what sort of country it is going to become.

Turkish worry

But the fate of the Syrian Kurds also has ramifications well beyond the country's borders. These processes are already under way.

Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the London School of Economics, told me that "the Syrian Kurds have already seized the moment and are laying the foundation for an autonomous region like their counterparts in Iraq".

"The exit of Assad's forces from the Kurdish areas has complicated the crisis and deepened Turkey's fears that its borders with Iraq and Syria will be volatile for years to come," he says.


Turkey has accused Syria of encouraging rebels from the Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK)
"The Kurdish factor in the Syrian crisis will prove to be as significant as the Kurdish question in Iraq."

Prof Ofra Bengio, head of the Kurdish Studies programme at the Moshe Dayan Centre at Tel Aviv University, agrees.

"The Kurdish dimension is likely to become a potent factor in the near future because of the weakening of each of the states in which they live, because co-operation among the states for curbing the Kurds is non-existent, and because the Kurds have made headway in the United States and in the West, where they proved their loyalty and lack of religious extremism.

"In a word, the West might like to support them."

If a Kurdish spectre is stalking the region then it is probably Turkey that has most reason to be worried.

Even as Ankara has watched developments in Syria with unease, its own struggle with guerrilla fighters of the Kurdish PKK has flared up again - Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu insisting that the Syrian government is encouraging the PKK, to get its own back for Turkey's insistence that President Assad must go.

But it is even more complicated than this. The dominant Kurdish faction inside Syria is a close ally - some say even an off-shoot - of the PKK. It has little love for the mainstream Syrian opposition championed by the Turks.

Colonial borders

Whilst fighting the PKK on one front, Turkey is desperately trying to curb the political ambitions of Syria's Kurds by political means.

Indeed the ramifications of the Kurdish issue go even further. Prof Gerges insists that the Kurdish question "is here to stay".

"It transcends national borders and has the potential to redraw the Sykes-Pico agreement, which, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, established existing nation-state boundaries.


Kurds in Syria have long complained of discrimination by the government

"Although it is too early to talk about the emergence of a greater Kurdistan, an imagined community of Kurds resonates deeply among Kurds across Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran."

It is in this sense the upheavals associated with the "Arab Spring" take on their full regional significance.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement (named not surprisingly after the two negotiators, Mr Georges Picot and Sir Mark Sykes) was a secret understanding made between France and Britain in 1916 for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.

The agreement led to the division of Turkish-held areas of the Levant into various French and British administered territories which eventually gave rise to the modern-day states of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and ultimately Israel.


Many Syrian Kurds have fled to Iraqi Kurdistan to escape the violence
Fawaz Gerges asserts that the events in Syria and their potential repercussions risk over-turning this familiar world; a broader re-ordering of the region in which Kurdish aspirations are just one part of a very complex picture.

"Many of the problems in the contemporary Middle East are traced to that colonial-era Sykes-Picot map, which established the state system in the region. The Palestine and Kurdish questions are cases in point."

"National borders do not correspond to imagined communities. Although the state system has established deep roots in the Middle East in the last nine decades, the current uprisings have starkly exposed the fragility of the colonial system imposed on the region.

"My take is that the great powers, together with their local partners, will fight tooth and nail to prevent the redrawing of the borders of the state system in the Middle East.

"For once the map is re-drawn, where would the limits be? There would be a real danger of perpetual instability and conflict," he says.


Sowing chaos?
The Kurds of Syria, of course, are not in quite the same position as their brothers in Iraq and would find it much harder to break away.

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Start Quote

In the back of the president's mind, there may be the thought that empowering the Kurds is a way of weakening the Sunni Arab majority”

Joshua Landis
Syrian expert
Noted Syria expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma says that while Syria's Kurds are a compact minority they are not a majority even in the north eastern border area with Turkey - where they constitute some 30-40% of the population.

They have sometimes tense relations with local Sunni Arab tribes who see this as an integral part of Syrian territory, reinforced by the fact that this is an area rich in oil resources vital to the Syrian economy.

Prof Landis argues that what is going on in the Kurdish north-east offers a useful pointer to President Assad's "Plan B" should his control over key cities like Damascus and Aleppo crumble.

He says that the "embattled president withdrew government forces from the north-east because he couldn't control it and wanted to focus on the most important battles in Aleppo and Damascus".

"But in the back of the president's mind, there may be the thought that empowering the Kurds is a way of weakening the Sunni Arab majority and underlining the risks of fragmentation should his government fall. It's a strategy of playing upon divisions to sow chaos," he said.

This way, says Prof Landis, "the Syrian Army - which is rapidly becoming an Alawite militia, whilst still the strongest military force - may lose control over large swathes of the country, but will remain a vital factor in determining the political outcome in Syria".

It is a bleak prospect.

Prof Landis asserts that President Assad "may lose Syria, but could still remain a player, and his Alawite minority will not be destroyed".

"That's the future of Syria," he says, with little enthusiasm. "It's what Lebanon was and what Iraq became."

More on This Story

15 August 2012 Last updated at 11:42 ET

Israel 'prepared for 30-day war with Iran'



Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East



Israel's outgoing home front defence minister says an attack on Iran would likely trigger a month-long conflict that would leave 500 Israelis dead.

Matan Vilnai told the Maariv newspaper that the fighting would be "on several fronts", with hundreds of missiles fired at Israeli towns and cities.

Israel was prepared, he said, though strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities had to be co-ordinated with the US.

Meanwhile, a US blogger has published what he says are Israel's attack plans.

Richard Silverstein told the BBC he had been given an internal briefing memo for Israel's eight-member security cabinet, which outlined what the Israeli military would do to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons.

Continue reading the main story
Analysis


Jonathan Marcus

BBC Diplomatic Correspondent

The text of the purported Israeli cabinet memo is just that, text. There is no document as such and thus it is impossible to verify if it is indeed an Israeli cabinet paper of some kind. But its purpose for Richard Silverstein is clear. He believes it was passed by a serving officer to the politician and then leaked by him precisely to alert the outside world to the scale of Israel's military plan to strike at Iran and thus to reduce the chances of it ever happening.

An unprecedented public debate is under way in Israel on the wisdom of launching an attack against Iran. And this leaked document, whatever its source, and whatever its original purpose, has become an element in that debate.

The document itself is striking in both the scale and scope of the military operation that it proposes. It also employs a range of technologies, many of which we have known that the Israelis are developing, but this document suggests that they are battle-ready and fully operational.

Leaked memo: propaganda or war plan?

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.

'Israel prepared'

The purported leaked Israeli memo suggests that the military operation would begin with a massive cyber-attack against Iran's infrastructure, followed by a barrage of ballistic missiles launched at its nuclear facilities.

Military command-and-control systems, research and development facilities, and the homes of senior figures in nuclear and missile development would also be targeted.

Only then would manned aircraft be sent in to attack "a short-list of those targets which require further assault".

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says it is not possible to verify the authenticity of the document, but the proposed mission would be huge and have potentially far-reaching consequences.

Iran's government and military have made it clear that if it is attacked either by Israel or the US, it will respond in kind, either directly or through proxies.

In his interview with Maariv, Mr Vilnai said Israel had "prepared as never before".

"There is no room for hysteria," said the former general, who is stepping down at the end of August to become Israel's ambassador to China.


He echoed an assessment by Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who said that it was believed that some 500 people in Israel might be killed.

"There might be fewer dead, or more, perhaps... but this is the scenario for which we are preparing, in accordance with the best expert advice."

"The assessments are for a war that will last 30 days on several fronts," he added, alluding to the possibility of attacks by the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia Islamist movement, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamist militants in the Gaza Strip.

Mr Vilnai also declined to comment on US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta's assertion on Tuesday that Washington did not believe Israel had yet made a decision on whether or not to launch a strike on Iran.

"I don't want to be dragged into the debate," he added. "But the United States is our greatest friend and we will always have to co-ordinate such moves with it."

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Mr Vilnai would be succeeded by Avi Dichter, a former head of Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet.

Tikun Olam-????? ????

Promoting Israeli democracy, exposing secrets of the national security state
Bibi’s Secret War Plan

by RICHARD SILVERSTEIN on AUGUST 15, 2012 · 33 COMMENTS
in MIDEAST PEACE

Gog and Magog: No to Iran War!

UPDATE: Here’s the link for my portion of the BBC Newshour segment in which I was interviewed about the Israeli government document.

Israelis are posting a claim that the document I published is identical to a post published by Fresh a few days ago. It is not. My original IDF source may have leaked the post to someone at Fresh. But whoever published it there embellished it with much material that is not in the original document. I can’t ascribe motives to whoever published it at Fresh, but much of it appears fanciful and isn’t in the original document.

* *

In the past few days, I received an Israeli briefing document outlining Israel’s war plans against Iran. The document was passed to me by a high-level Israeli source who received it from an IDF officer. My source, in fact, wrote to me that normally he would not leak this sort of document, but:

“These are not normal times. I’m afraid Bibi and Barak are dead serious.”

The reason they leaked it is to expose the arguments and plans advanced by the Bibi-Barak two-headed warrior. Neither the IDF leaker, my source, nor virtually any senior military or intelligence officer wants this war. While whoever wrote this briefing paper had use of IDF and intelligence data, I don’t believe the IDF wrote it. It feels more likely it came from the shop of national security advisor Yaakov Amridor, a former general, settler true believer and Bibi confidant. It could also have been produced by Defense Minister Barak, another pro-war booster.

I’ve translated the document from Hebrew with the help of Dena Shunra.

Before laying out the document, I wanted to place it in context. If you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know that after Bibi’s IDF service he became the marketing director for a furniture company. Recent revelations have suggested that he may have also served in some capacity either formally or informally in the Mossad during that period.

This document is a more sophisticated version of selling bedroom sets and three-piece sectionals. The only difference is that this marketing effort could lead to the death of thousands.

This is Bibi’s sales pitch for war. Its purpose is to be used in meetings with members of the Shminiya , the eight-member security cabinet which currently finds a 4-3 majority opposed to an Iran strike. Bibi uses this sales pitch to persuade the recalcitrant ministers of the cool, clean, refreshing taste of war. My source informs me that it has also been shared in confidence with selected journalists who are in the trusted inner media circle (who, oh who, might they be?).

This is Shock and Awe, Israel-style. It is Bibi’s effort to persuade high-level Israeli officials that Israel can prosecute a pure technology war that involves relatively few human beings (Israeli, that is) who may be put in harm’s way, and will certainly cost few lives of IDF personnel.

Bibi’s sleight of hand here involves no mention whatsoever of an Iranian counter-attack against Israel. The presumption must be that the bells and whistles of all those marvelous new weapons systems will decapitate Iran’s war-making ability and render it paralyzed. The likelihood of this actually happening is nearly nil.

There will be those who will dispute the authenticity of this document. I’m convinced it is what my source claims, based on his prior track record and the level of specificity offered in the document. It references cities by name and the facilities they contain. It names new weapons systems including one Israel supposedly hasn’t even shared with the U.S.

No, it’s real. Or I should say that while it’s real, it is the product of the Israeli dream factory which manufactures threats and then creates fabulist military strategies to address them. The dream factory always breaks the hearts of the families of those whose members fall victim to it. It never produces the result it promises, nor will it do so here.

Remember Bush-era Shock and Awe? Remember those promises of precision-guided cruise missiles raining death upon Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Remember Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” ceremony on the deck of the USS Lincoln, only six or seven years premature? Remember the promises of decisive victory? Remember 4,000 U.S. dead, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?

Now, think of what an Israeli war against Iran could turn into. Think about how this sanitized version of 21st century war could turn into a protracted, bloody conflict closer to the nine-year Iran-Iraq War:

The Israeli attack will open with a coordinated strike, including an unprecedented cyber-attack which will totally paralyze the Iranian regime and its ability to know what is happening within its borders. The internet, telephones, radio and television, communications satellites, and fiber optic cables leading to and from critical installations—including underground missile bases at Khorramabad and Isfahan—will be taken out of action. The electrical grid throughout Iran will be paralyzed and transformer stations will absorb severe damage from carbon fiber munitions which are finer than a human hair, causing electrical short circuits whose repair requires their complete removal. This would be a Sisyphean task in light of cluster munitions which would be dropped, some time-delayed and some remote-activated through the use of a satellite signal.

A barrage of tens of ballistic missiles would be launched from Israel toward Iran. 300km ballistic missiles would be launched from Israeli submarines in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. The missiles would not be armed with unconventional warheads [WMD], but rather with high-explosive ordnance equipped with reinforced tips designed specially to penetrate hardened targets.

The missiles will strike their targets—some exploding above ground like those striking the nuclear reactor at Arak–which is intended to produce plutonium and tritium—and the nearby heavy water production facility; the nuclear fuel production facilities at Isfahan and facilities for enriching uranium-hexaflouride. Others would explode under-ground, as at the Fordo facility.

A barrage of hundreds of cruise missiles will pound command and control systems, research and development facilities, and the residences of senior personnel in the nuclear and missile development apparatus. Intelligence gathered over years will be utilized to completely decapitate Iran’s professional and command ranks in these fields.

After the first wave of attacks, which will be timed to the second, the “Blue and White” radar satellite, whose systems enable us to perform an evaluation of the level of damage done to the various targets, will pass over Iran. Only after rapidly decrypting the satellite’s data, will the information be transferred directly to war planes making their way covertly toward Iran. These IAF planes will be armed with electronic warfare gear previously unknown to the wider public, not even revealed to our U.S. ally. This equipment will render Israeli aircraft invisible. Those Israeli war planes which participate in the attack will damage a short-list of targets which require further assault.

Among the targets approved for attack—Shihab 3 and Sejil ballistic missile silos, storage tanks for chemical components of rocket fuel, industrial facilities for producing missile control systems, centrifuge production plants and more.

While the level of specificity in this document is, in some senses, impressive, in one critical aspect it is deficient. Muhammad Sahimi points out that the current chief of the Revolutionary Guards, when he assumed his position in 2007, deliberately addressed the issue of over-centralization of command and control by dividing the nation into 31 districts. Each of these has its own independent command and control facilities and mechanisms. So Israel wouldn’t be able to knock out a single facility and paralyze the IRG. They’d need to knock out 31 separate sets of facilities–a much harder task.

There seems also to be an assumption that Iran’s leaders and nuclear specialists live nice domestic lives and that Israeli intelligence knows where they all live and can easily target them. In truth, the most senior Iranian military and scientific figures live clandestine lives and it’s hard for me to believe even the Mossad knows where they are and how to target them.

So it appears that Netanyahu believes he’s fighting Saddam circa 2003. During that war, the Iraqi Revolutionary Guards were centralized and knocking out one C&C center could decapitate the entire military apparatus. But Iran has learned from Saddam’s mistakes. It isn’t fighting the last war as Bibi appears to be. It is preparing for the next one. While Israel may have new tricks up its sleeve that no one in the world has yet seen, if it doesn’t understand the nature of the enemy, its defenses, its structure, etc. then it can’t win.

News Alert: I’ve just been interviewed by BBC Newshour’s Julian Marshall and anticipate they will air a segment about this story at 1:30PM UK time and at 9:30AM east coast time (6:30AM west coast). I’m not sure which time it will air in Israel, but I believe it would be 3:30PM. If your NPR station airs BBC World Service you should hear it. I don’t know if it will be repeated any other times during the day. You can tell me that if you hear it.

U.N. names Algerian diplomat as Syria envoy; refugee crisis dire



By Tom Perry and Louis Charbonneau

BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS | Fri Aug 17, 2012 7:09pm EDT

(Reuters) - The United Nations on Friday confirmed that veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi would become the new international mediator on Syria, as the 17-month-old conflict slid deeper into civil war and refugees fled to Turkey in increasing numbers.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces have turned increasingly to air power to hold back lightly armed rebels in the capital Damascus and Aleppo, a northern commercial hub. More than 18,000 people have died and some 170,000 have fled the country as a result of the fighting, according to the U.N.

Brahimi, who hesitated for days to accept a job that France's U.N. envoy Gerard Araud called an "impossible mission," will replace former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is stepping down at the end of the month.

"The (U.N.) Secretary-General appreciates Mr. Brahimi's willingness to bring his considerable talents and experience to this crucial task for which he will need, and rightly expects, the strong, clear and unified support of the international community, including the Security Council," U.N. spokesman Eduardo del Buey said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby back Brahimi's appointment, said del Buey, who added that achieving a diplomatic solution to the Syrian crisis remained a top priority for the United Nations.

Diplomats said all Security Council members supported Brahimi.

The announcement confirmed what diplomats told Reuters on Thursday.

Brahimi, a Nobel Peace laureate, will have a new title, Joint Special Representative for Syria. Diplomats said the change was to distance him from Annan, who had complained that his Syria peace plan was hampered by a divided Security Council.

U.N. officials told Reuters that Brahimi was expected to arrive in New York next week to meet with Ban and discuss plans for a fresh approach to Syria.

In an interview with France 24 television, Brahimi said he would soon meet with the Security Council.

"We are going to discuss very seriously how they can help," he said. "They are asking me to do this job. If they don't support me, there is no job. They are divided, but surely they can unite on something like this and I hope they will."

Security Council members Russia and China are resisting Western efforts to step up pressure on Assad to quit and are unwilling to give even an amber light for military intervention -- not that the United States and its allies have shown any appetite for overt action in Syria.

Washington, however, has stepped up non-lethal support to the rebels.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a statement said: "My message to Special Envoy Brahimi is simple: The United States stands ready to support you and secure a lasting peace that upholds the legitimate aspirations for a representative government of the people of Syria."

Clinton's message to the Syrian people was "you are not alone," and she said the international community was committed to a Syrian-led political transition and to ensuring those who commit atrocities are held accountable.

DIARRHEA OUTBREAK

Turkey, a key regional supporter of the Syrian rebels, is taking the brunt of a swelling exodus of refugees, with 66,000 Syrians now sheltering there, the Turkish state disaster and emergency authority said.

Some 1,500 arrived from the rebel-held border town of Azaz after Assad's air force bombed it on Wednesday, killing at least 35 people, Turkey's Dogan news agency reported. It said another 1,500 from the devastated town were thought to be on their way.

More than 250 people, including 123 civilians, were killed in Syria on Thursday alone, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition watchdog.

Turkey's state-run Anatolian news agency said 13 of 86 casualties brought from Aleppo and Azaz to a state hospital in the Turkish border province of Kilis had died from their wounds.

More than 170,000 Syrian refugees have been registered in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, the U.N. refugee agency said.

"There has been a further sharp rise in the number of Syrians fleeing to Turkey," spokesman Adrian Edwards of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in Geneva. Forty percent of those in Turkey had arrived this month, he added.

Humanitarian conditions in Syria have deteriorated as fighting worsens, cutting off civilians from food supplies, health care and other assistance, U.N. agencies say. Sewage-contaminated water has led to a diarrhea outbreak in the countryside around Damascus, with 103 suspected cases.

Some 1.2 million people are uprooted in Syria, many staying in schools or other public buildings, U.N. officials say. U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos, ending a visit to Syria, said on Thursday up to 2.5 million people needed aid there.

UNITING SYRIAN OPPOSITION

A Syrian astronaut who was part of a Soviet space mission a quarter of a century ago condemned on Friday the world's failure to stem violence in Syria and urged Assad's opponents to keep up their struggle.

General Muhammed Ahmed Faris, a military aviator and the first Syrian in space, fled to Turkey 10 days ago, joining the ranks of prominent defectors who have included military generals and former Prime Minister Riyad Hijab.

Hijab, who defected this month, has arrived in Qatar to discuss how to unify opposition efforts to hasten Assad's downfall, his spokesman said.

A Sunni Muslim, Hijab is the most senior civilian official to desert Assad, whose ruling system is dominated by members of his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Shi'ite Iran, Assad's closest ally, has cast the revolt in Syria as a plot by the United States and its regional allies to destroy an anti-Israel "axis of resistance" linking Tehran, Damascus and Lebanon's Shi'ite Hezbollah movement.

"You want a new Middle East? We do too, but in the new Middle East ... there will be no trace of the American presence and the Zionists," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech to mark annual state-organized rallies against Israel.

The war in Syria is fraught with danger for neighboring countries such as Lebanon, where a local Shi'ite clan this week kidnapped more than 20 Syrians to try to secure the release of a kinsman seized by Syrian rebels near Damascus.

The gunmen said a Turkish hostage would be the first to die if their relative were killed.

Gulf Arab states have told their citizens to leave Lebanon after threats that more hostages would be seized.

The last U.N. monitors are due to leave Damascus by August 24, U.N. officials said, after a doomed mission to observe a ceasefire declared by Annan on April 12. It never took hold.

"It is clear that both sides have chosen the path of war, open conflict, and the space for political dialogue and cessation of hostilities and mediation is very, very reduced at this point," deputy U.N. peacekeeping chief Edmond Mulet said.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Issam Abdullah and Erika Solomon in Beirut, Stephanie Nebahey in Geneva, Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Writing by Alistair Lyon and Paul Simao; Editing by Jon Boyle and Jim Loney)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/17/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE8610SH20120817

Sergei Lavrov held talks with China's top diplomat, State Councillor Dai Bingguo, on Tuesday


Russia has warned against unilateral action in Syria after the US said it might intervene militarily if Damascus used chemical weapons on the rebels.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there should be no outside interference and countries should "strictly adhere to the norms of international law".

On Monday, President Barack Obama said the deployment of chemical weapons represented a "red line" for the US.

Meanwhile, troops are reported to have stormed a western suburb of Damascus.

'Correct path'
On Tuesday, Russia's foreign minister held talks in Moscow with China's top diplomat, State Councillor Dai Bingguo, and a Syrian government delegation to discuss the conflict, which the UN says has left 18,000 people dead.

After meeting Mr Dai, Mr Lavrov said Moscow and Beijing based their diplomatic co-operation on "the need to strictly adhere to the norms of international law and the principles contained in the UN Charter, and not to allow their violation".

Continue reading the main story
Syria's chemical weapons

The CIA believes Syria has had a chemical weapons programme "for years and already has a stockpile of CW agents which can be delivered by aircraft, ballistic missile, and artillery rockets"
Syria is believed to possess mustard gas and sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent
The CIA also believes that Syria has attempted to develop more toxic and more persistent nerve agents, such as VX gas
A report citing Turkish, Arab and Western intelligence agencies put Syria's stockpile at approximately 1,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, stored in 50 towns and cities
Syria has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) or ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)
Sources: CSIS, RUSI

Fears over fate of Syria's chemical weapons
"I think this is the only correct path in today's conditions," Mr Lavrov added.

He said only the UN Security Council could authorise the use of force against Syria, and warned against imposing "democracy by bombs".

He also told Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil that he wanted to hear his plans for "further actions to shift the situation into the channel of political dialogue in order for Syrians themselves to decide their fate without external interference".

Mr Jamil said external interference was "hindering efforts for Syrians themselves to resolve this problem".

Russia and China have opposed intervention in Syria since anti-government protests erupted in March 2011. They have vetoed three Security Council resolutions seeking to press President Bashar al-Assad to end the violence.

On Monday, President Obama warned Syria's government at a news conference that "there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons".

Mr Obama said that he had not ordered military engagement "at this point", but added that the US was monitoring the situation carefully and had made contingency plans.

In July, the Syrian government admitted that it had chemical and biological weapons and might use them in case of any "external aggression". But it insisted they would "never be used in the Syrian crisis, no matter what the internal developments".


Obama: "It doesn't just include Syria. It would concern allies in the region, including Israel, and it would concern us"
Correspondents say there is also growing unease in Washington that Syria's chemical weapons may fall into what Mr Obama termed "the hands of the wrong people".

On Tuesday, soldiers were said to have stormed the western Damascus suburb of Muadhamiya.

At least 23 people were killed and shops and houses were set on fire after government forces entered Muadhamiya at dawn, looking for rebel fighters, opposition activists said.

The bodies of several men who had been shot at close range were found inside buildings after the troops withdrew from the town, they added.

There was reportedly also heavy shelling and fierce fighting in the southern town of Herak and in the northern city of Aleppo, where the Japanese journalist, Mika Yamamoto, was killed on Monday.

A commander in the Free Syrian Army, Col Abdul Jabbar al-Ukaidi, told the AFP news agency that its fighters now controlled "more than 60%" of Aleppo, although a security source in Damascus dismissed the claims.