Saturday In The News

U.S., Russia Agree On Dismantling Syria Chemical Weapons

Assad’s government must submit a comprehensive list of its chemical weapons stocks within a week; this is to come ahead of their transfer and destruction, US Secretary John Kerry said at a joint press conference with Russian FM Sergey Lavrov.

The deal worked out between Moscow and Washington on settling the Syria crisis stipulates that Syria’s chemical weapons will be rapidly destroyed. 

Kerry said the Syrian government should provide the UN with full access to its chemical sites, and insisted that the plan to remove the chemical arsenal should be transparent. It remains undecided which side or country will actually work at destroying the stock; the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will have to look into that. 

On the timetable, Kerry said UN inspectors must be on the ground no later than November, while the destruction of chemical weapons must be completed by the middle of 2014. It remains undecided which country will actually do the work of destroying the chemical weapons. 

"Providing this framework is fully implemented it can end the threat these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people but also their neighbors," Kerry said adding that Russian and US teams of experts had reached "a shared assessment" of the existing stockpile and that Syria must destroy all of its weapons. It was possible that the Syrian rebels have some chemical weapons, he acknowledged. 

If Damascus fails to comply with the plan, a response in accordance with UN Charter Chapter 7 will follow, Kerry said, in a reference to the use of military force. The chapter provides for "action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security" in the event other measures fail. 

Agreement Reached On Syrian Chemical Weapons

The United States and Russia agreed Saturday on an outline for the identification and seizure of Syrian chemical weapons and said Syria must turn over an accounting of its arsenal within a week.
The agreement will be backed by a U.N. Security Council resolution that could allow for sanctions or other consequences if Syria fails to comply, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said.
Kerry said that the first international inspection of Syrian chemical weapons will take place by November, with destruction to begin next year.
Senior administration officials had said Friday the Obama administration would not press for U.N. authorization to use force against Syria if it reneges on any agreement to give up its chemical weapons.
The Russians had made clear in talks here between Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kerry that the negotiations could not proceed under the threat of a U.N. resolution authorizing a military strike. Russia also wanted assurances that a resolution would not refer Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the International Criminal Court for possible war-crimes prosecution.
President Obama has said that the unilateral U.S. use of force against Syria for a chemical attack last month remains on the table. But consideration of that action, already under challenge by a skeptical Congress, has been put on hold pending the outcome of the Geneva talks.
The discussions here began this week following a Russian proposal Monday, quickly agreed to by Assad, to place Syria’s chemical arsenal under international control and eventually destroy it.
Kerry and Lavrov, negotiating behind closed doors with teams of disarmament experts, have said little about the talks that began Thursday. But administration officials in Washington provided some details on the condition that they not be identified or quoted directly.
The officials insisted that any agreement must be verifiable and include consequences for non-compliance. Short of a threatened use of force, it is not clear what those consequences would be.

Obama Amenable To Toothless Syria Resolution

Senior White House officials said Friday that President Barack Obama may be open to a UN resolution to secure Syria’s chemical weapons that does not include the threat of military force for failing to abide by the agreement.

The officials say Obama retains the authority to launch a strike, but Russia is expected to veto a resolution that includes a military trigger.

The officials also outlined for the first time a timetable for negotiations with Russia over Syria’s chemical weapons. The officials say they will know within a few weeks whether that effort has the necessary traction.

Degraded Credibility

Here’s how the Obama folks have been starting to spin Syria. The president made a credible threat to use military force in Syria. At the same time, he worked behind the scenes to get Russia’s Vladimir Putin to push Bashar Assad to give up chemical weapons. These two seemingly discordant initiatives, brilliantly coordinated, combined to produce a process to eliminate Assad’s chemical weapons without even a shot being fired across the bow.
Of course, every bit of this is false. Only the most credulous Obama fans are fooled.

The claim that the Russians agreed to push Syria on chemical weapons only because Obama threatened to use force requires the belief that they thought he would do so after an adverse congressional vote. Not likely. Nor is it likely that John Kerry’s statement at his Monday press conference in London that the attack could be avoided if Syria submitted to international inspections was part of a calculated strategy. Kerry’s next words were, “But he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously.” Kerry was winging it, and so was Obama when he spoke favorably of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s offer to push Syria to give up its poison gas.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger muscled the Soviet Union out of Middle East diplomacy back in 1973. In the 40 years since, American presidents have worked to keep the Russians out. Now they’re back in. A nation with a declining population, a weakened military, and an economy propped up only by oil and gas exports has suddenly made itself the key interlocutor in the region. Obama has allowed this even though it’s obvious that effective disarmament is impossible in a nation riven by civil war and ruled by a regime with every incentive and inclination to lie and conceal. The negotiations and any fig-leaf inspection process can be dragged out for weeks, months, and years, as Saddam Hussein demonstrated.
Obama said he hoped to degrade Syria’s chemical-weapons program. Instead he has degraded his own — and America’s — credibility.

Western Strike Force For Syria Disperses. Syria Launches Offensive Near Israeli Border

Russian President Vladimir Putin, while engaged in active cooperation with President Barack Obama over Syria, was not averse to going over his head to push his agenda with “the American people” in an article he published in The New York Times Thursday, Sept. 12.

He continues to protest against all the evidence that the calamitous chemical attack of Aug. 21, east of Damascus, was perpetrated by Syrian rebels, not the Syrian army.

This is clearly an attempt to turn the American people and its lawmakers once and for all against US military intervention in Syria in any shape or form.

If Putin succeeds in getting his message across, it would be the second time in a decade that Moscow has worked its will on the American people. The first time, the Russians aimed at discrediting the Bush administration by convincing the world ahead of America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, although he was on record as having gassed 5,000 of his Kurdish citizens to death in 1988.

In his article, Putin went on to say sanctimoniously: “It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as one relying solely on brute force.”

The famously peace-loving Russian leader was lambasting an American president known for his extreme shyness of military action. Putin must be utterly confident that Obama is too far along their joint diplomatic path with Iran on Syria to back out now. He is evidently counting on a military attack being finally off the table and the Assad regime guaranteed safe.

Western military armada built up opposite Syria in the past two weeks was breaking up as the US president’s resolve for military action faded under relentless pressure from Moscow.  

The British and French ships headed through the Suez Canal for the Red Sea Wednesday, Sept. 11, and the American vessels pulled back from Syrian shores to waters between Crete and Cyprus.

Obama has therefore caved in on his original intention of keeping the war armada in place - as heat for Assad to comply with the Russian plan for the elimination of his chemical weapons.

Every reputable chemical and military expert has advised the US president that there is no way that Assad’s chemical arsenal can be located and destroyed without importing an army of monitors long term for the job, and this can’t be accomplished while a civil war is raging in the country. Even if it becomes feasible, it will take years.

Meanwhile, the Syrian army is not waiting for diplomacy to run its course and Thursday, resumed offensive operations in the south, targeting Deraa and advancing rapidly towards the Syrian-Jordanian-Israeli border intersection.
The rebels’ morale is in the pits out of a sense of betrayal by the Obama administration and their resistance to the Syrian army’s onslaught is half-hearted at best.

Has Obama's Syrian Debacle Increased The Prospects Of An Israeli Strike On Iran?

With all the recent chatter about “nerve gas” , no one has said anything about Syria’s Massive stockpiles of bio-weapons. Perhaps this explains Assad’s apparent willingness to allegedly disarm of his chemical stockpiles .This way he can “comply with the international norms” while maintaining WMD deterrence. Meanwhile, as the Western strike force for Syria disperses, Assad has begun setting conditions for the disarmament deal, like guarantees for non-intervention by the U.S. and similar steps he claims Israel should be making with regards to Chemical weapons – a clear way to refrain from fulfilling his alleged commitments in that respect,while enabling Russia and Iran maintain their upper hand vs. the buffoonish Obama regime. Maybe NATO will come up with some sort of bio false flag next time ? This latest debacle also buys time for the Iranian nukes because they’ll be able to use the same methodology while maintaining their core capacities, and Obama will be able to say he complied with Netanyau’s concept of disarming a regime from WMD’s by posing a “credible military threat”, without actually doing anything.

For this reason, many analysts believe the chances of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran have doubled following Obama’s Syrian debacle vis a vis Putin. The Americans have swayed the Israelis back from doing just that so far, by convincing them that breaking the Shiite axis should commence from Damascus. This strategy never made any sense because even in the unlikely event that Assad would be removed by them, it would not get Iran to abandon its nuclear program, but to accelerate it at full pace, knowing they will be the next target.The present nullification of the American military option in Syria may finally get the Israelis to sober up from the Obama delusion and take care of the problem by themselves.  

Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) urged Secretary of State John Kerry in a letter sent Friday to ensure that any deal to disarm Assad includes his biological weapons stores, which likely include various neurotoxins and deadly viruses.

Kerry is in Geneva for a series of meetings with his Russian counterpart on a proposal to move some 1,000 tons of chemical weapons out of Syria.

Cornyn told Kerry that biological weapons are just as dangerous and destructive as chemical weapons, which Assad is believed to have used against rebel fighters and civilians.

“Bioweapons also constitute weapons of mass destruction and, for decades, the government of Syria has pursued this capability to complement its massive chemical weapons arsenal,” Cornyn wrote. “I urge you to ensure Syria’s biological weapons are included as an equal component of any plan.”

Cornyn said that while he remains “highly skeptical of Russia’s true intentions” in proposing a plan to disarm its ally Assad, he believes that “omitting Assad’s bioweapons from any agreement would represent a gaping hole in the plan and would not adequately protect U.S. national security interests.”

Bioweapons could easily fall into the hands of al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists who could then transfer them out of the country.

Assad was known to have an “extensive [bioweapons] research effort” at the time the report was published. Evidence indicated there was at least “one underground facility” and another “near the coast.”

These facilities were believed to have a “production capability for anthrax and botulism, and possibly other agents,” Cordesman wrote in the report, which was published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“Israeli sources claim Syria weaponized botulinum and ricin toxins in the early 1990s, and probably anthrax,” according to the report.

There were also “limited indications” that Assad “may be developing or testing biological variations on ZAB-incendiary bombs and PTAB-500 cluster bombs and Scud warheads.”

Also see:



Fukushima 'Not Under Control' - TEPCO Official Refutes PM's Assurances

Security Forces On High Alert As Israelis Mark You Kippur