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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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07May13
White House Holds Firm on Cautious Path in Syria Crisis
The White House insisted Monday that it would not be thrown off its cautious approach to Syria, despite Israeli military strikes near Damascus and new questions about the use of chemical weapons in the civil war there.
The administration cast doubt on an assertion by a United Nations official that the Syrian rebels, not the government of President Bashar al-Assad, had used the nerve agent sarin. And it backed Israel's right to strike Syrian targets to disrupt shipments of weapons from Iran to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah.
For President Obama, both developments muddied a crisis that is already rife with complexity. But there was little evidence that they did anything to affect what his aides say is a deep reluctance to be drawn further into a conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people.
Despite that reluctance, the White House is weighing more robust action, including supplying arms to the rebels -- in part because of its conclusion that there was a strong likelihood that the Assad government has used chemical weapons on its citizens. The rationale for that response could be undermined, however, if there was proof that the rebels themselves -- some of whom are radical Islamists -- had also used such weapons.
Meanwhile, as part of the administration's latest attempt to engineer the departure of Mr. Assad, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived Tuesday in Moscow, where he will meet with President Vladimir V. Putin to try to persuade Russia, Syria's main patron, to withdraw its support for Mr. Assad.
The assertion that there is evidence suggesting the rebels have used sarin was made by Carla Del Ponte, a former chief prosecutor for international criminal tribunals that investigated Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia who is now serving on a commission looking into human rights abuses in Syria.
But that commission later issued a statement clarifying that it had not reached a conclusion about which side used the gas, and the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, added the administration's doubts.
"We are highly skeptical of the suggestion that the opposition could have or did use chemical weapons," Mr. Carney said. "We find it highly likely that any chemical weapon use that has taken place in Syria was done by the Assad regime. And that remains our position."
A senior State Department official told reporters that the United States took Ms. Del Ponte's allegations seriously, but said of the rebels, "We have no information that they have either the capability or the intent to deploy or use such weapons."
Another senior official noted that Ms. Del Ponte, was not a member of another United Nations panel that is investigating chemical weapons.
As for the recent missile attacks by Israel, which the White House declined to confirm, Mr. Carney said Israel had a legitimate concern about "the transfer of sophisticated weapons to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, and they have a right to act in their own sovereign interest."
Some lawmakers seized on the strike, and the lack of Syrian resistance, as evidence that the country's air defenses are not as lethal as some in the administration had claimed.
But current and former American air commanders discounted arguments made by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and others, who have said that enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria would be easier and less risky than the administration has portrayed.
"There's a huge difference between taking out a handful of targets and establishing a no-fly zone over all or parts of a country for a certain period of time," said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, the Air Force's former top intelligence official who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
General Deptula said he did not have details about the airstrikes over the weekend, but said it was likely they were carried out by so-called stand-off weapons that allowed Israeli warplanes to fire at targets inside Syria without crossing into Syrian airspace.
He also distinguished the goal of the Israeli attacks from whatever no-fly zone the United States and its allies might establish. If the targets of the Israeli strikes were long-range missiles capable of reaching Israeli cities, as American officials said over the weekend, then Israeli officials would be responding to a direct threat to national security, General Deptula said. A no-fly zone established to protect Syrian civilians would almost certainly be a much more ambitious and riskier mission.
Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a report that Israel's success indicated the "purely military risks in enforcing some form of no-fly or no-move zone are now more limited than when the fighting in Syria began."
But Mr. Cordesman said Syria's air defenses were still far more formidable than those in Libya, noting, "It would take a massive U.S. air and cruise missile attack to suppress it quickly and would be difficult for even two carrier groups to carry out and sustain."
Israel, a senior American official said, has long voiced concern to the United States about the transfer of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah through Syria, so its action was not a big surprise. The official said it would not affect other American calculations, like whether to arm the rebels.
Steven Simon, a former senior official on Mr. Obama's National Security Council, said he believed the decision whether to arm the Syrian opposition would not be linked to the Israeli airstrikes.
"The U.S. and Israel have overlapping but not identical interests at stake in the conflict," said Mr. Simon, who is now head of the Washington office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"On chemical weapons, assuming that the regime did use them, the U.S. is looking for options to deter further use that don't undercut -- or, in the best case -- don't foreclose a political resolution," he said. "It's not clear that arming the opposition meets either objective."
For Mr. Obama, the bigger complication of the Israeli attack may be political. The president has been trying to coordinate the response to the Syrian conflict among several players, including Europeans, Turkey and Arab states from Jordan to Saudi Arabia.
"The Israelis' being assertive, while Obama is not, doesn't play in his favor," said Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy. "You need to have the Arabs onside."
Mr. Tabler said Ms. Del Ponte's charge that the rebels might have used chemical weapons raised questions about the unity of the United Nations in dealing with Syria. "It struck me as political," he said. "They're trying to blur the situation to stave off some kind of intervention."
[Source: By Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, 07May13]
 | This document has been published on 07May13 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. |