Syria: Rebels Give US Targets To Defeat Regime

'Unorthodox' Attacks Point To Militia

Updated: 9:09am UK, Tuesday 10 September 2013

By Stuart Ramsay, Chief Correspondent

Not a single person I have met in northern Syria has even the slightest doubt that Bashar al Assad's military has used chemical weapons against them on multiple occasions.

Many now in the border areas are there exactly because they witnessed the attacks and decided not to stick about for another.

The Damascus incident last month and who did it can be argued about of course, but chemical weapons experts working with Sky News are in no doubt that chemicals were used and have been on multiple occasions in the past.

The experts, using evidence available to them, advise that the delivery of these weapons was unorthodox; the Syrian regime has proper delivery systems for chemicals.

But, setting aside the Damascus incident, they conclude that someone was "freelancing" their use in other attacks.

They suspect it was militia working in tandem with the government.

Part of their reasoning is that the purchasing, handling and preparation of chemical weapons is extremely difficult and dangerous.

In one incident that they have specific knowledge of, Syrian soldiers and chemical experts working with them were all killed when a chemical bearing warhead was accidentally dropped.

One can conclude from this that the Syrian government, at the very least, is actively involved in preparation of chemical weapon use.

It is reported in Turkish media that jihadists have been arrested either in possession of chemicals or attempting to buy them.

One can conclude from that, if it is true, that some extreme elements of the rebel movement would like chemical weapons as well.

But there is not a single piece of evidence indicating that rebels have used chemicals or practised using them.

Nobody from Sky News or any other broadcaster or journalist, as far as I am aware, has witnessed chemical weapons or their use by the rebels throughout this war.

But is this really the point here? Few Syrians really draw a distinction between 100,000 dead from conventional fighting and between 400 and 1,000 dead from chemicals.

They are all dead and most because of Mr Assad's determination to ignore calls for change and the end of his dictatorship.

Right now Assad's planes are attacking villages across the north of the country. I saw the jets and heard the explosions.

The Free Syrian Army, the civilian leadership of northern Syria and the vast numbers of internally displaced and refugees want the United States to bomb the Syrian military.

The FSA says 13 brigades in northern Aleppo will become one and will lead the fight to Damascus.

They are confident that the myriad of Jihadi groupings will set aside differences and join them.

All accept that the regime will retaliate and probably at a terrible cost to those who have stayed behind.

But as the governor of Aleppo said to me: "We fight on."

While Moscow plots to undermine action against its ally and Washington decides to plot or not against its President, there is one absolute fact beyond all sceptical analysis: the Syrian government continues to kill its own people. Every day.

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Delhi Gang Rape: Four Men Guilty Of Attack

Four men have been convicted of the gang rape of a 23-year-old woman as she travelled on a bus in Delhi.

Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh lured the woman and her male friend onto the bus as they returned home from watching a movie last December.

The physiotherapy student was raped and assaulted with an iron bar before she was dumped on the roadside with her friend.

She suffered serious internal injuries and died in a Singapore hospital 13 days after the attack.

The brutality of the assault triggered waves of protests across India, with new laws introduced and existing ones amended to give women greater protection.

The rape led to nationwide protests which forced the government to act

Fast-track courts were also set up to try men accused of sexual crimes.

The conviction of the four men follows an eight-month trial, during which more than 100 people gave evidence.

The case had been expected to finish sooner, with defence lawyers accused of using delaying tactics.

The men, who were found guilty of all charges against them, including rape and murder, are expected to be sentenced on Wednesday, when they could be given the death penalty.

A woman lights a candle during a vigil for the 23-year-old victim

Defence lawyers for Thakur, Sharma and Singh, who occasionally drove the bus and cleaned it, said they will appeal the verdict.

A fifth defendant, Ram Singh, was found hanged in his cell in Delhi's Tihar prison in March. His family and defence lawyers believe he was murdered.

A sixth person, who was a juvenile at the time of the attack, has already been found guilty of murder, rape and kidnapping.

He was sentenced to three years in a correction facility - the maximum penalty he could be given.

The parents of the victim, who argue the punishment is too lenient, called for him to be tried as an adult and to be hanged.

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Syria 'Agrees To Hand Over Chemical Weapons'

Weapons Handover Is Unrealistic

Updated: 12:23pm UK, Tuesday 10 September 2013

The Russian proposal for Syria to voluntarily give up its chemical weapons is logistically unrealistic but diplomatically clever.

US Secretary of State John Kerry either blundered into a Russian trap, or disguised an offer as an off-the-cuff remark when he suggested Syria could avoid air strikes by handing over its chemical weapons within a week. Most analysts believe it to be the latter.

Either way, it took about an hour for his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to seize the moment and make his proposal.

A giant smokescreen quickly enveloped the international stage, but behind it you could hear a large ladder being dragged on to give everyone an opportunity to climb down from their current positions, especially President Obama.

The UN quickly embraced the proposal, the British and French gave it a cautious welcome, the Americans said they would look at it, the Syrians did what they will continue to do - they prevaricated.

Everyone spoke with a straight face. They either don't know the complexities behind the reality of the Russian idea, or they felt it better to ignore them until the smoke clears and the route down the ladder becomes apparent.

Who would actually go to Syria and secure the weapons under the auspices of the UN is unclear. It would take hundreds of scientists and others, and it could take months.

Syria is thought to have 1,000 tonnes of chemical weapons spread across dozens of sites.

In the event of full co-operation by the government, which has yet to even admit it has such weapons, the UN would have to beg borrow and steal the experts from a variety of countries prepared to put their top scientists at risk.

It would also have to assemble a support team.

In the meantime Syria would have to sign and ratify the Convention on Chemical Weapons.

When the UN teams arrived they could venture to some of the relatively safe areas under Government control, but getting to sites in contested areas would be problematic.

To put that into English, the UN inspectors would risk being shelled by the Syrian army as it attacked other targets, shot at by rebels for being part of the process which stopped US air strikes, blown up by roadside bombs, and kidnapped by whichever local gang wanted to get themselves into trouble.

This is not the type of job the world's top chemical weapons scientists are best suited for even with a UN security force alongside them.

In a controlled environment the Russian proposal can work. Syria is not a controlled environment.

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Syria Warns America 'To Expect Everything'

Syrian President Bashar al Assad has warned America "to expect everything" if it attacks in retaliation for his alleged use of chemical weapons that killed more than 1,400 civilians in Damascus.

Speaking in an interview to US television network CBS, Mr Assad denied he was behind the chemical atrocity on August 21 and said the US had provided "not a single shred of evidence" that his forces were involved.

When pressed by CBS correspondent Charlie Rose about what would happen if the US attacked Syria, he replied "every action".

Meanwhile, America has urged President Assad to hand over his chemical weapons, saying it was the only way to stop a military strike against his forces.

US Secretary of State John Kerry made the demand after flying into London for talks with British Foreign Secretary William Hague in the latest stage of his diplomatic tour to garner support for attacking Mr Assad's regime.

He told a news conference at the Foreign Office that the US "was not going to war" with troops on the ground, but was instead planning a "very limited, very targeted, very short-term" strike.

But, conversely, he added: "Let me be clear, the United States, President Obama, myself, others, are in full agreement that the end of the conflict in Syria requires a political solution. There is no military solution, we have no illusions about that."

He again set out the evidence America claims it has that the Syrian government was behind the chemical atrocity on August 21, saying the "risk of not acting is greater than the risk of acting".

A Free Syrian Army fighter in Raqqa province, eastern Syria

Sky's Foreign Affairs Editor, Tim Marshall, said that by telling President Assad he could avoid American action by turning over every chemical weapon he has in the next week, Mr Kerry was giving him an option.

"Damascus could now engage in linguistic gymnastics, admit it has small quantities of chemicals, and suggest the United Nations comes to secure them as quickly as possible," Marshall said.

"Given that 'quickly' and the 'UN' do not usually belong in the same sentence, that could drag things out for weeks. 

"This is an unlikely scenario, but it is puzzling as to why Mr Kerry even bothered to formulate what can be taken as an ultimatum."

Mr Kerry also stressed the importance of the "special relationship" between the US and Britain and said the two countries were "enormously tied together".

Mr Hague said the US has Britain's "full diplomatic support" and supported "mustering a strong international response" to Mr Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons that killed more than 1,400 civilians in Damascus.

It came as Mr Assad thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his support during the G20 summit last week.

This morning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Western leaders that any military strikes would cause an "outburst of terrorism" in the region and spark a new wave of refugees.

Congress will vote on whether to launch military action in Syria

"The possibility for a political solution remains," he said after talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al Muallem, saying Damascus was still "ready for peace talks".

US politicians are set to discuss backing for military action against Syria as President Barack Obama prepares to make a series of TV appearances to push his case.

Congress will start debating the issue today and are expected to vote later this week on whether to authorise force against the Syrian regime.

While the White House believes an endorsement from the Senate could be within reach, Mr Obama faces a wall of opposition from both Republicans and from many of his Democratic allies in the House of Representatives.

The White House has refused to state whether Mr Obama, elected in 2008 promising to end foreign wars, would order a strike even if Congress votes "no".

In a determined final effort for military backing, Mr Obama is due to appear on six US TV networks today, ahead of delivering a live address to the nation on Tuesday.

Speaking in Paris at a news conference before he left for London, Mr Kerry said 12 countries were now prepared to take military action against Syria.

Those states would make their own announcements within 24 hours, he added.

He did not rule out returning to the UN Security Council to secure a Syria resolution once UN inspectors complete their report on the alleged chemical weapons attack.

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Syria: Historic Damascus In 'Grave Danger'

By Andrew Wilson, Sky News Presenter, in Damascus

The only real sign that Damascus is under siege is the traffic; line upon line of frustrated drivers hemmed in by the city's seemingly endless army checkpoints.

That and the bang of artillery shells fired out into the suburbs to keep the rebels at bay.

But Damascus, the oldest and most continually inhabited city in the world is in grave danger; on land from an increasingly violent collaboration of militia, funded and motivated by a bewildering mix of agendas.

From within by the most complicated and unpredictable regime on the planet.

And from further afield by the most powerful armed force on the planet whose commander-in-chief has decided once and for all to take a stand and wade in with the frightening technological arsenal at his disposal.

Even worse, it is not entirely clear who of these three has the least understanding of the situation.

Boys search for belongings in a Damascus suburb

Two years ago the rebellion in Syria was, if not coherent, at least a popular representation of the hopes and fears of a disenfranchised sector of the Syrian people. Not any longer; when the people of Damascus tell you that it is al Qaeda knocking at the gates of their city they are not far wrong.

And when the Syrian generals failed to bomb those popular uprisings into submission, also two years ago, they haven't really produced any kind of Plan B since. They remain in their bases and the capital probably wondering more about their own eventual survival than any strategic way forward.

And now that President Obama has finally identified a war crime on the wrong side of his own red line, it seems that a cartoon-like over-simplification of what he should do next is the only narrative he can take to Congress.

Syrians are now sandwiched in the most unfair and ugly way between the forces of chaos on the top and the immovable stubbornness of an outdated regime on the bottom.

For the most part their plea to the West is that of a multi-ethnic secular society that embraces the peace and harmony of living together that no other Arab nation has come close to matching. And they have a point.

But when vast swathes of the country took to the streets to call for a better way of life they chose to ignore them.

That mistake has ushered in the potential for chaos that could sweep aside the missile strikes of the world's policeman and drag the Middle East into a much darker place than anyone yet has cared to really consider.

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Syria: Live Updates As US Congress Meets

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8:27am UK, Monday 09 September 2013

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RAF Scrambles Typhoons Amid Syria Tensions

Two RAF Typhoon jets were scrambled from their base in Cyprus to investigate unidentified aircraft in international airspace amid mounting tensions over Syria, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.

Reports suggest the rogue aircraft, which were spotted on radar by the British and Turkish air forces on Monday, came from Syria.

An MoD spokesman said: "Typhoon Air Defence Aircraft operated from RAF Akrotiri on Monday, 2nd September 2013, to investigate unidentified aircraft to the east of Cyprus; the aircraft were flying legally in international airspace and no intercept was required."

The Sunday Mirror quoted a military source as saying: "This is a clear sign of the tension boiling over because of Syria. Everyone is on edge.

"It is a pretty serious move to send up Typhoons - one of their roles is to intercept any possible enemy strike."

A week ago, six RAF Typhoon jets were sent to Cyprus in what the MoD called a "prudent and precautionary measure".

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the number of countries ready to take military action against Syria was now in the "double digits" after holding talks in Lithuania with EU foreign ministers.

Mr Kerry met French foreign minister Laurent Fabius on Saturday

Following the meeting on Saturday, the EU ministers issued a call for action against Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime.

The EU did not explicitly back military action, but Mr Kerry said he was encouraged by the "very powerful statement" made by the bloc.

"There were a number of countries, in the double digits, who are prepared to take military action," he said.

"We have more countries prepared to take military action than we actually could use in the kind of military action being contemplated."

The US accuses the Assad regime of gassing to death 1,429 people, including 426 children, in an August 21 attack outside Damascus.

In his weekly address, US President Barack Obama warned of the dangers of "turning a blind eye" to chemical attacks.

"I call on members of Congress, from both parties, to come together and stand up for the kind of world we want to live in," he said on his return from a deadlocked G20 summit in St Petersburg.

My Kerry says support for airstrikes is mounting

Mr Obama has asked for Congress to authorise strikes on Syria. Congress reconvenes on Monday and the president is set to address the nation on Tuesday about the US response.

Mr Kerry said Mr Obama had made no decision about whether to wait for the release of a UN investigation into the alleged August attack before taking action.

Prime Minister David Cameron has ruled out bringing the issue of intervention back to the Commons and he has the support of the public, according to a new poll.

The ICM survey found voters opposed MPs voting again on British involvement - even if the UN inspectors concluded chemical weapons were used, by 46% to 36%.

But almost a quarter (24%) accepted that the decision to stay out would encourage other dictators to use chemical weapons, the poll for The Sunday Telegraph showed.

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Syria: Kerry Heads For Talks With Hague

US Secretary of State John Kerry is due in the UK, as he continues a European tour aimed at increasing support for military action in Syria.

He will hold talks with Foreign Secretary William Hague in the wake of the vote by MPs against the action.

Mr Kerry, speaking in Paris, said the number of countries prepared to take military action against Syria is now "in the double digits".

France has made no secret of its desire to play Washington's supporting partner after the US accused Syria of gassing its own people with sarin.

"We have more countries prepared to take military action than we actually could use in the kind of military action being contemplated," he said.

Meanwhile, speaking on Sky News' Murnaghan programme former Defence Secretary Liam Fox said there was a case for another Commons vote "in the light of the wider evidence that is now available".

He said the debate had been about the consequences of intervention "but there wasn't enough debate, I don't feel, about the consequences of non-intervention."

London is in John Kerry's sights as he seeks support for Syria strikes

"If we believe the regime in Syria still has chemical weapons and if, as many of us think, the opposition may also have access to chemical weapons and we send the signal that they can use them with impunity what does that mean for the safety ... of the ordinary people of Syria?"

Mr Kerry held talks with 28 EU foreign ministers in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on Saturday before travelling to Paris. He is due to meet Arab leaders, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said there was agreement that all indications point to the Assad regime being responsible for a gas attack in Damascus that may have killed more than 1,400 people.

But in a joint statement member states stopped short of endorsing any US-led strike, stressing "the need to move forward with addressing the Syrian crisis through the UN process".

Later, Mr Kerry held further talks with Mr Fabius in Paris and spoke in French and English as he outlined the case for military action.

He said the world should not be "spectators to slaughter", but said President Obama had not yet decided whether to wait for the UN inspection report before taking action.

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton called for "a clear and strong response" to the attack but officials said the European Union has agreed that any potential strike against Syria should wait until after UN inspectors publish their report.

It is reported that the experts could submit their initial findings by the end of next week.

President Barack Obama will address his nation on Tuesday as he battles to secure the backing of Congress for the use of the American military for a punishment strike on Mr Assad's government.

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US Spy Agency Can 'Access Smartphone Data'

The US National Security Agency is reportedly able to access users' data on all major smartphones.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel cites internal documents from the intelligence agency and its British counterpart GCHQ in which the agencies describe setting up dedicated teams to crack protective measures on iPhones, BlackBerry and Android devices.

This data includes contacts, call lists, SMS traffic, notes and location data about where a user has been.

A 2009 NSA document states that it can "see and read SMS traffic".

It also notes there was a period in 2009 when the NSA was temporarily unable to access BlackBerry devices when it changed the way it compresses its data.

But in March 2010, an NSA department regained access to BlackBerry data and celebrated with the word, "champagne!".

Der Spiegel says the documents do not indicate that the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of phone users but rather that these techniques are used to eavesdrop on specific individuals.

The article published on Sunday does not say how the magazine obtained the documents.

But one of its authors is Laura Poitras, an American filmmaker with close contacts to NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

The latest revelations come after documents handed to The Guardian by Snowden showed the NSA had developed the capability of breaking encryption codes protecting millions of websites.

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Assad Loyalists Protect Damascus Mountain

By Sally Arthy, Senior News Editor, Damascus

Every night for the past week, loyal Assad supporters have bedded down in tents on Mount Qussioun overlooking Damascus.

On the top of the mountain is the main transmitter for Syrian TV.

These people are trying to protect the site from possible US attack. As such they say they are human shields.

They wear white T-shirts with the logo, "Over our dead bodies".

Government forces at a checkpoint on mount Qussioun

Their canvas tents are in two uniform rows on either side of a parking area at one of the most panoramic viewing points on the road up.

Patriotic songs blare out from a sound system set up in one of the shelters.

A huge Syrian flag has been draped down the side of the hill. And it is draped around the backs of some of the activists who have set up the camp.

One of the organisers is 21-year-old law student Hussain Othman. He says he started the sleep in "to protect Syria".

File picture of mount Qussioun

He said: "We will continue until the end. We are civilians. We are against any military strikes."

Ammar Shamia is also in the crowd of demonstrators. He says two of his sons were shot dead by opposition forces last year. 

One was 14-years-old, the other just eight. He says they were killed because their four-year-old brother was singing a pro-Syria song.

Three friends from Damascus University have come to the camp to check it out. They hope to find a bed for the night.

One of them, Isaa Ali, is angry. His voice rises when he talks about the possibility of American strikes.

He said: "I want to continue to study. I want other governments to leave us alone."

Below the camp the city of Damascus sprawls out. It is a spectacular view. But it is punctuated by plumes of smoke - a reminder of the war still raging on the ground in this country.

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