DAMASCUS, Syria, July 31 (UPI) — Syrian President Bashar Assad has joined photo-sharing site Instagram, posting pictures of himself with sick and elderly citizens. …read more
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Putin: Snowden must not damage relations with US
President Vladimir Putin says NSA leaker Edward Snowden has been warned against taking any actions that would damage relations between Moscow and Washington.
Snowden has applied for temporary asylum in Russia, three weeks after arriving at one of Moscow’s international airports from Hong Kong. The United States wants him sent home to face prosecution for espionage.
Granting Snowden asylum would add new tensions to U.S.-Russian relations already strained by criticism of Russia’s pressure on opposition groups, Moscow’s suspicion of U.S. missile-defense plans and Russia’s resistance to sanctions against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
On a visit to the Siberian city of Chita on Wednesday, Putin said “we have warned Mr. Snowden that any actions by him connected with harming Russian-American relations are unacceptable,” according to Russian news agencies.
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Syria: Pro-government figure killed in Lebanon
State-run media in Damascus say gunmen have assassinated a prominent Syrian pro-government figure at his home in southern Lebanon.
The SANA news agency says Mohammed Darrar Jammo was gunned down early on Wednesday outside his home in the southern Lebanese coastal town of Sarafand.
Jammo, a political analyst who often appeared on Arab TV stations, was one of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s strongest defenders.
Assassinations of politicians, army officers and journalists are not uncommon in Syria but the killing in Lebanon of a Syrian figure is a rare incident.
Sarafand is in predominantly Shiite southern Lebanon where Assad enjoys wide support.
The shooting is the latest spillover from Syria’s civil war, now in its third year, into Lebanon, where people are divided between Assad supporters and opponents.
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UK issues Syrian rebels chemical attack protection
Britain says it is rushing to issue Syria’s rebel fighters with chemical warfare protection, including escape hoods, drugs and chemical detector paper.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague told Parliament Tuesday that roughly 655,000 pounds (nearly $1 million) worth of equipment would be sent to the rebels as “a matter of special urgency” because evidence suggests that Syrian President Bashar Assad has deployed chemical weapons against the opposition.
Syria is believed to have large stocks of the nerve gas sarin which Western powers, including the United States, say has been used to poison rebel fighters in urban areas.
Syrian officials deny the charge, alleging instead that rebels have used the arms against government forces.
Hoods and drugs can be used as short-term fixes to evade or treat sarin poisoning.
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Israeli leader vows to keep weapons from Hezbollah
Israel’s prime minister insists he will not allow “dangerous weapons” to reach Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the comment Sunday following reports that Israel carried out an airstrike in northern Syria last week. The airstrike reportedly targeted a shipment of Russian anti-ship missiles.
Asked about the reports on the CBS-TV show “Face the Nation,” Netanyahu refused to confirm or deny Israeli involvement. He said Israel’s policy “is to prevent the transfer of dangerous weapons to Hezbollah and other terror groups,” according to a transcript of the interview provided by CBS.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, a key Hezbollah ally, has previously threatened to retaliate if Israel carries out more attacks on his territory. Israel was reported to have hit a weapons shipment near Damascus earlier this year.
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Iran calls on UAE not to deport its nationals
An Iranian news agency says the foreign minister has called on the United Arab Emirates not to deport its nationals.
The Iranian media has reported that the UAE has repatriated an unspecified number of Iranians amid tensions between the two countries linked to Syria’s civil war. Shiite Iran backs Syrian President Bashar Assad, a member of a Shiite offshoot sect, while the Sunni-majority UAE and Saudi Arabia support the mostly Sunni rebels.
The UAE has not reported any deportations. The UAE has in the past denied renewal of residency visas without giving reasons.
A Friday report by the semi-official Mehr agency said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi raised the issued in a phone conversation with his Emirati counterpart. It didn’t elaborate.
An estimated half-million Iranians live in the Emirates.
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Israeli lawmaker urges intervention in Syria
A veteran Israeli lawmaker and former defense minister says Syria‘s chemical weapons are “trickling” to Lebanon‘s militant Hezbollah group.
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio on Monday that he is shocked by the “world’s silence” and that the West must intervene to stop the high civilian death toll in Syria.
He says he “has no doubt” Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons and that some of the weapons are “definitely reaching” Israel‘s enemy Hezbollah.
The Israeli government convened its security cabinet to discuss Syria late on Sunday but no details were released.
Both sides in Syria‘s civil war accuse each other of using chemical weapons.
The U.S. has warned such weapons cross a red line and last week said the weapons were probably used, though it still seeks definitive proof.
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Gunmen kill 10 Iraqi security forces in 2 attacks
Gunmen killed 10 people in Iraq, including five soldiers near the main Sunni protest camp west of Baghdad, the latest in a wave of violence that has raised fears the country faces a new round of sectarian bloodshed.
The attack on the army intelligence soldiers in the former insurgent stronghold of Ramadi drew a quick response from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Shiite-led government has been the target of rising Sunni anger over perceived mistreatment.
The attackers stopped a vehicle carrying the soldiers near the protest camp, prompting a gunbattle that left the five soldiers dead and two of the attackers wounded, police officials said.
Al-Maliki vowed his government would not keep silent over the killing of the soldiers. Iraqi officials have repeatedly claimed that insurgent groups, such as Al Qaeda in Iraq and supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam regime, have infiltrated the Sunni demonstrations.
“I call upon the peaceful protesters to expel the criminals targeting military and police,” al-Maliki said in a statement posted on his official website.
Authorities announced a curfew in the whole province of Anbar. They also gave the protest organizers in Ramadi, the provincial capital, a 24-hours deadline to hand over the gunmen responsible for killing the soldiers or face a “firm response,” said Maj. Gen. Mardhi Mishhin al-Mahalawi, the army’s Anbar operations chief.
Members of Iraq‘s Muslim Sunni minority have been rallying for the past four months in several Iraqi cities to protest what they describe as unfair treatment by al-Maliki’s government.
Tensions spiked earlier this week when fighting broke out in the northern town of Hawija during a security crackdown on a protest encampment. That provoked a series of clashes nationwide that left more than 170 people dead over the past five days.
In Cairo, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood group, from which Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi hails, condemned the Iraqi government‘s actions in the crackdown. The Sunni political and religious organization decried the Iraqi government‘s “violence in dealing with the peaceful demonstrators and protesters that resulted in the killing and wounding of many innocent people, which is rejected by Islam and humanity.”
It added: “this is not the way people are governed or the way to achieve security and reform.” Morsi’s government has itself come under criticized as scores of Egyptian protesters have been killed or wounded in police crackdowns and street clashes since the Islamist leader was elected after Hosni Mubarak‘s ouster in 2011.
For many Iraqi Shiites, the months of protests coupled with the latest unrest raise worrying parallels to the civil war engulfing neighboring Syria.
There, Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s regime is fighting largely Sunni rebels who draw support from Turkey and Sunni Gulf states. Assad’s Alawite sect is a branch of Shiite Islam, and his regime is backed by Shiite powerhouse Iran, which also has significantly bolstered ties with Iraq in the years since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
In a speech Saturday, al-Maliki warned that sectarianism is an “evil thing” that can swiftly spread from country to country in the Islamic world — an apparent reference to the divisions in
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illinois man tried to join Al Qaeda-linked group, FBI says
A suburban Chicago teenager has been arrested on terrorism-related charges and accused of seeking to join an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in war-torn Syria, the FBI announced Saturday.
Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, 18, was arrested Friday night as he attempted to board a flight from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to Turkey, which borders Syria, the FBI said.
The head of the FBI office in Chicago, Cory B. Nelson, said in a statement announcing the arrest that there are no links between Tounisi’s case and the bombings at the Boston Marathon earlier in the week.
Tounisi, a U.S. citizen from Aurora, is charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. If convicted, he faces a maximum 15-year prison term.
Tounisi carried out research online about Jabhat al-Nusrah, or Nursa Front, which is a well-organized rebel faction fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s regime in a bloody civil war, the complaint says. The U.S. government has designated the group a foreign terrorist organization, describing it as an alias for the group Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Neither the complaint nor the FBI statement includes the name of an attorney for Tounisi. And there was no public telephone listing for a Tounisi in Aurora, which is just west of Chicago.
According to the FBI, Tounisi made contact over email last month with an FBI employee posing as a Nursa Front recruiter and expressed “his willingness to die for the cause.”
The complaint also says Tounisi is a friend of Adel Daoud, another Chicago-area man who was arrested last year on charges he sought to detonate a device he thought was a bomb outside a downtown bar.
Daoud has pleaded not guilty and is in jail awaiting trial.
The complaint does not accuse Tounisi of playing a role in the alleged attack planned by Daoud, though it does say the two friends discussed “techniques and targets” before Daoud’s arrest.
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FBI: Ill. man planned to join Syrian extremists
The FBI has arrested an 18-year-old suburban Chicago man who U.S. authorities say was planning join an al-Qaida-affiliated group operating in Syria.
The FBI says Abdella Ahmad Tounisi (ab-DUH‘-lah AH‘-med too-NEE‘-see), of Aurora, Ill., was arrested Friday night as he tried to board a flight from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to Turkey.
Tounisi, a U.S. citizen, is charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
According to the criminal complaint, Tounisi carried out research online about Jabhat al-Nusrah, or Nursa Front. Nusra Front is the most effective rebel faction fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s regime. The group is affiliated with al-Qaida in Iraq.
The FBI says a bureau employee posing as a recruiter for the group exchanged emails with the suspect.
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Syria envoy: Syria not cooperating
The joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria on Friday gave the Security Council a grim assessment of the Syrian civil war, saying that Damascus is completely uncooperative in negotiations.
“With the Syrians, I got nowhere,” Lakhdar Brahimi told reporters after the closed-door briefing.
Since last year, Brahimi has been promoting a peace plan that would call for a transitional government in which Syrian President Bashar Assad would step aside. Damascus has shown no appetite for discussing Assad’s resignation.
Brahimi also chided the Security Council for its ongoing deadlock over the war. Western and Arab nations blame the conflict on Assad’s government. Russia insists on assigning equal blame to the Syrian rebel opposition, and has used it veto, along with China, to block draft council resolutions.
“On the Security Council, with the Americans and the Russians, we made some progress but it is too little,” Brahimi said.
“If they really believe that they are in charge of looking after peace and security, there is no time for them to lose to really take this question more seriously than they have until now,” he said.
Brahimi denied rumors he was resigning, capping a week of widespread reports in the Arab world that he was quitting in frustration, or dumping his affiliation with the Arab League, which has officially recognized the Syrian opposition forces as the legitimate government.
Brahimi assumed the U.N.-Arab League envoy role last year after former U.N. chief Kofi Annan quit in frustration.
“I haven’t resigned,” Brahimi said. “Every day I wake up, I think I should resign. But I haven’t so far. One day, perhaps, one day I will resign, and I assure you, you will find out.”
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UN asks Security Council for cross-border aid OK
The U.N.’s chief humanitarian official on Thursday asked the Security Council to approve cross-border relief operations into Syria to deliver aid to civilians.
It was the opening of a public briefing by the U.N. agency chiefs for humanitarian affairs, refugees, women in conflict, and children in conflict, who used the Security Council platform as a way of speaking over the heads of the deadlocked council nations to appeal to the world for pressure to allow relief for Syria‘s civilians.
The agency chiefs launched their campaign Monday with an op-ed in The New York Times that said: “There still seems to be an insufficient sense of urgency among the governments and parties that could put a stop to the cruelty and carnage in Syria.”
Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos said the U.N. agency is currently hampered by Syria‘s requirement that two Syrian government ministers must sign approval papers for every truck allowed into the country. She said children are starving to death in Syria for want of food aid.
The Security Council has been deadlocked for months on the Syrian war, and is not expected to act or make any statement after Thursday’s briefing.
Western and Arab nations blame the conflict on Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s government. Russia insists on assigning equal blame for the suffering to the Syrian rebel opposition, and has cast vetoes to block draft council resolutions.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, thanked Turkey for taking in Syrian refugees, and especially called for international funding for Jordan and Lebanon to help them operate their refugee camps.
More than 5 million people have been displaced by the Syrian conflict, which began over two years ago. In the past few weeks, the humanitarian agencies have separately warned that their resources are running low, and added that without additional funds they will be forced to scale back relief efforts.
Over a million refugees in neighboring countries have been given shelter while U.N. agencies have helped 5.5 million Syrians get access to food, water and sanitation as well as basic health services.
The U.N. special representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Bangura, said women in Syria have been “raped, tortured and humiliated.”
“Many have
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Iran condemns Boston but criticizes US policy
Iran‘s top leader has condemned the bombing attack in Boston but at the same time charged that U.S. policies employ a double standard.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran is opposed to the killing of innocent people, whether in Boston, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria. He was addressing Iranian military commanders in Tehran. His comments were posted on his website Wednesday.
He criticized the U.S. for killing people with drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan and backing forces that kill others in Iraq and Syria.
Iran is the chief regional ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad and is considered close to Iraq‘s Shiite Muslim-dominated government.
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Dozens killed, at least 100 wounded in attacks across Iraq
A series of attacks across Iraq killed 27 people and wounded well over 100 on Monday morning, officials said.
The attacks, many involving car bombs, took place less than a week before Iraqis in much of the country are scheduled to vote in the country’s first elections since the 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal. The vote will be a key test of security forces’ ability to keep voters safe.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but coordinated attacks are a favorite tactic of al-Qaida’s Iraq branch.
Iraqi officials believe the insurgent group is growing stronger and increasingly coordinating with allies fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad across the border. They say rising lawlessness on the Syria-Iraq frontier and cross-border cooperation with the Syrian militant group Nusra Front has improved the militants’ supply of weapons and foreign fighters.
Nearly all of the deadly attacks reported by police officials were bombings, which struck Baghdad, in the western city of Fallujah, the contested northern city of Kirkuk and towns south of the capital. Another 100 people were wounded.
Windows rattled from the force of a blast in central Baghdad when a bomb struck the central commercial district of Karrada. That blast and others in the capital, including one caused by a parked car bomb that went off in a bus station, killed 10.
In Kirkuk, an oil-rich city about 290 kilometers (180 miles) from Baghdad, police said nine people were killed when six car bombs went off simultaneously. Three bombs exploded downtown — one in an Arab district, one in a Kurdish one, and one in a Turkomen district. The rest went off elsewhere in the city, which is home to a mix of ethnic groups with competing claims.
In addition to the bombings, drive-by shooters armed with pistols fitted with silencers shot and killed a police officer while he was driving his car in the two of Tarmiyah, 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
Hospital officials confirmed the casualty tolls. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release details to reporters.
Although violence in Iraq has fallen from its peak in 2006 and 2007, bombings and other attacks remain common.
The blasts struck a day after a series of attacks left 10 people dead, including a Sunni candidate running in the upcoming provincial elections. The most serious attack Sunday happened when a booby-trapped body exploded among a group of policemen, who were trying to inspect the body that was left in the street.
Iraqis vote Saturday in what will be the country’s first election since U.S. troops withdrew in December 2011. The election, for local-level officials, will be a test of the strength of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s political bloc as well as the ability of security forces to keep the country safe.
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Hezbollah-backed Lebanese Shiites fight in Syria
Masked men in camouflage toting Kalashnikov rifles fan out through a dusty olive grove, part of a group of Hezbollah-backed fighters from Lebanon who are patrolling both sides of a porous border stretch with Syria.
The gunmen on the edge of the border village of al-Qasr say their mission is to protect Shiites on the Syrian side who claim their homes, villages and families have come under attack from Sunni rebels.
Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of many of Lebanon‘s Shiites and a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has said his group is supporting the cadres of fighters who call themselves Popular Committees.
It is confirmation that the powerful Lebanese militant group is playing a growing role in the civil war just across the border.
Syria‘s regime is dominated by minority Alawites — an offshoot of Shiite Islam — while the rebels fighting to overthrow Assad are mostly from the Sunni majority. Assad’s major allies, Hezbollah and Iran, are both Shiite.
The sectarian tensions in the civil war have spilled over to neighboring Lebanon, which has a similar ethnic divide and a long, bitter history of civil war and domination by Syria. Deadly gunbattles have broken out in Lebanon in recent months between supporters of both sides of the Syrian war.
But more broadly, Hezbollah’s deepening involvement shows how the Syrian civil war is exacerbating tensions between Shiites and Sunnis around the Middle East.
Syrian rebels accuse Hezbollah of fighting alongside Assad’s troops and attacking rebels from inside Lebanese territory.
In recent months, fighting has raged in and around several towns and villages inhabited by a community of some 15,000 Lebanese Shiites who have lived for decades on the Syrian side of a frontier that is not clearly demarcated in places and not fully controlled by border authorities. They are mostly Lebanese citizens, though some have dual citizenship or are Syrian.
Before Syria‘s uprising erupted two years ago, tens of thousands of Lebanese lived in Syria.
The Lebanese Shiite enclave on the Syrian side of the border is near the central city of Homs and across from Hermel, a predominantly Shiite region of northeastern Lebanon.
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Iraq reports searching Syrian plane; no arms found
An Iraqi aviation official says authorities ordered a Damascus-bound Syrian plane transiting Iraqi airspace to land for inspection, but that no weapons were found onboard.
Nassir Bandar, Iraq‘s top civil aviation official, says inspectors checked the Airbus passenger plane traveling from Moscow on Sunday morning. It was the first time Iraq has reported inspecting a Syrian plane.
The United States has been pressuring Iraq to do more to ensure that its airspace and territory are not being used to ferry weapons to Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s embattled regime.
Baghdad has stepped up inspections of Iranian flights in recent days. Tehran is a major backer of Assad and also maintains friendly relations with the Shiite-led government Baghdad.
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Foreign minister says Russia would back North Korea talks in Geneva
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday his nation would welcome a fresh round of talks on Swiss soil over North Korea‘s nuclear program, if all the parties were to agree.
Flanked by his Swiss counterpart at a news conference, Lavrov supported renewed talks in Geneva, if Pyongyang were to agree to hold discussions with Russia, Japan, South Korea, the United States and China.
But both officials made clear there was no such general agreement.
“If we can re-establish that, Russia would, of course, support it,” Lavrov, who spoke in Russian, said in response to a question.
North Korea agreed in principle in 2005 to scrap its nuclear program, including a presumed small stockpile of weapons, in return for aid and diplomatic incentives from other members of the six-party talks. But Pyongyang walked out of talks in 2009 and later conducted more nuclear tests.
Recently, North Korea warned it has weapons “on standby” and aimed at its foes if provoked, but has not revealed specific plans to fire a missile or carry out another nuclear test.
Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter, who spoke in French, said his nation had offered to host such talks “but, of course, that should be agreed by all parties and that is not the case at the moment.”
Switzerland also has offered to attempt to defuse the crisis on the Korean Peninsula by mediating between the United States and North Korea. Switzerland and Sweden help monitor the demilitarized zone that was created after the Korean War ended in 1953, with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula still technically at war.
Switzerland brokers relations between the U.S. and Iran, and is home to the U.N.’s European headquarters in Geneva, where peace talks and other negotiations are held regularly.
North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un reportedly attended school for several years in Switzerland, which also has maintained a humanitarian aid office in North Korea.
On Syria, Lavrov said Russia would support an international war crimes prosecution — eventually.
“Without any doubt, this aspect must be taken into account in this complex process, in the search for a final settlement for the future of national reconciliation in Syria,” he said. “But at this stage, I think the first priority is to end the violence as fast as possible to avoid more civilian deaths.”
Russia has been Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s staunch ally, supplying Damascus with weapons and shielding the regime from tougher U.N. sanctions.
“And these calls for not allowing impunity are totally correct,” Lavrov added, “but what I notice is that certain people try to use that to slow down discussions and have the reconciliation process canceled, which will only lead to more deaths.”
Lavrov also warned the United State against naming Russians accused of human rights abuses, who are to be targeted for U.S. financial sanctions and visa bans under a new law dubbed the Magnitsky Act. The law was named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested in 2008 for tax evasion after accusing Russian police officials of stealing $230 million in tax rebates.
Magnitsky was
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Iraq inspects 3rd Iranian plane to Syria this week
An Iraqi official says the country has forced an Iranian plane headed to Syria to land in Baghdad so authorities could search it for arms. It’s the third inspection in as many days.
Ali al-Moussawi says no weapons were found on the 747 cargo flight Wednesday. It made checks of Syria-bound Iranian flights the two previous days, saying no weapons were discovered.
Iraq is under pressure from Washington to do more to prevent its airspace from being used as a possible conduit for Iranian arms to Tehran’s ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Baghdad last week vowed to conduct more searches of vehicles on land and aircraft in its airspace. Officials have repeatedly said they will not allow Iraqi territory to be used for weapons to either side in Syria‘s conflict.
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Kerry meeting with Syrian opposition in London
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with Syrian opposition leaders and Russia‘s top diplomat a day after saying the U.S. could soon step up aid to rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s regime.
Kerry is attending a lunch alongside the Syrian opposition’s interim prime minister and other senior figures. He later meets one-on-one with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Kerry is in London for a G8 foreign ministers’ meeting Wednesday and Thursday. He arrived from the Middle East, where he held three days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Before leaving Israel, he said the Obama administration was holding intense talks on how to boost aid to Syria‘s rebels. He said it was important to increase pressure on Assad’s regime to get it to the negotiating table.
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Iraq searches Syria-bound Iranian cargo plane
An Iraqi government spokesman says his country has forced a Syria-bound Iranian plane to land at Baghdad International Airport for search it for weapons.
Ali al-Moussawi said that only humanitarian aid and commercial goods were found on the Tuesday flight.
Iraq forced another Iranian plane to land the day before. The U.S. has pressed Iraq to ban Iranian overflights to prevent arms reaching the forces of Tehran’s ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Baghdad will not ban flights altogether, but last week it promised Washington that it would conduct more random searches of both vehicles traveling overland and aircraft in its airspace to check for weapons.
Officials said they will not allow Iraqi territory to be used to supply weapons to either side in Syria‘s conflict.
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