Jumat, 13 April 2012

Syria items of interest....

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/04/2012413221714883639.html


UN vote on Syria mission delayed
US calls for vote on Saturday on a ceasefire observer mission, even though Russia is not certain to back the text.
Last Modified: 13 Apr 2012 23:48
Members of the United Nations Security Council have failed to come to an agreement on a draft resolution that would authorise a UN observer mission to Syria, with Russia registering objections on its contents.
After failing to come to an agreement on the resolution during lengthy debates on Friday, a revised resolution is expected to be voted on on Saturday.
The United States called for the vote at 15:00 GMT on Saturday, despite the fact that Russia is not "completely satisfied" with some portions of the text.
Rival draft resolutions
The two countries had earlier submitted rival draft resolutions for the vote by the 15-member body on the deployment of 30 observers to Syria to monitor a ceasefire implemented as part of a UN-Arab League peace plan.
First the United States, backed by Britain, France, Germany, and others registered a draft resolution that demanded "full, unimpeded, and immediate freedom of movement" for an observer mission.

UN resolution debate

Diplomats at the United Nations Security Council are debating a draft resolution that would established a preliminary, 30-strong unarmed military observer force in Syria aimed at implementing the ceasefire plan negotiated by envoy Kofi Annan. Read the draft here.
It warned of "further measures" if Assad's government did not "implement visibly" the commitments made under Annan's peace plan.
Russia later distributed another version of the resolution, taking out the demand for "unimpeded" access and any reference to measures that could be taken if the Syrian government was deemed to be in non-compliance with the resolution.
It also took out condemnation of alleged human rights abuses in Syria.
Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the UN, said that his country favoured a brief resolution that would get "some boots on the ground" in the form of the advance observer mission, with the mandate of the full mission to be debated later.
Kofi Annan, the joint UN-Arab special envoy who formulated the six-point peace plan that has nominally been accepted by the government and parts of the opposition, said that the UNSC should call on Assad to implement all portions of the plan.
Annan's plan includes, among other things, the requirement that troops and heavy weapons be withdrawn from Syria's cities in order to curb a government crackdown on a year-long uprising against Assad's regime.
The rival resolutions authorise the deployment of up to 30 unarmed military observers. The UN eventually wants at least 200 monitors in the country where it says well over 9,000 people have been killed in the past 13 months.
Ahmed Fawzi, a spokesman for Annan, said the team of observers is "standing by", and that a ceasefire put in place under the six-point plan is tenuous, but largely holding.
Protests in the wake of that ceasefire have broken out across the country, and government forces have responded by firing into the air, reportedly killing several protesters, activists say.
Fawzi told Al Jazeera on Friday that scattered reports of violence in Syria did not mean the ceasefire was failing and called on both sides to exercise restraint. He said that while there were reports of "skirmishes ...  the fact remains that heavy shelling ... has died down".
The continued presence of government troops and armoured vehicles in cities and other civilian areas, a violation of one of the six key points in Annan's peace plan, was "extremely" concerning, Fawzi said, but more important was a halt to the killing.
Protests test ceasefire
In what promised to be a test of the ceasefire, demonstrations began across the country on Friday afternoon, and Syrian forces tightened security in public squares and outside mosques.
 
At least one protester was killed when a demonstration tried to reach central Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based organisation, said. Other activists said two people had been shot dead at an army checkpoint.
Activist video posted on YouTube apparently showed protesters throwing rocks at security forces in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, and gunfire could be heard.
An activist in a town near the Turkish border told Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from Turkey, that pro-government armed groups known as shabiha had personally threatened to kill residents who protested on Friday.
Russia and China have twice vetoed resolutions at the UNSC on the Syrian crisis, saying that they were too critical of the Syrian government, without being so of the opposition, both political and armed.
Both countries have, however, strongly committed to Annan's peace plan.
The Security Council has passed three "presidential statements" but no formal resolution on Syria since the uprising against Assad started in mid-March last year.
and.....

http://www.debka.com/article/21913/

Obama’s election politics empowers Iran, North Korea, Syria before Istanbul talks
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis April 13, 2012, 11:28 PM (GMT+02:00)
Watching the North Korean missile launch
In their different ways, the rulers of Iran, North Korea and Syria this week tried to throw US President Barack Obama off balance by exploiting the foreign policy balls he is juggling to win the November election – a combination of tough talk and  maneuvers to avoiding military confrontation.
Wednesday, April 11, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  chose Abu Musa island near the Strait of Hormuz to offer the Arab Gulf rulers a piece of advice “…they should take a look at the map of Iran so that they understand about which great and powerful country they are talking.”
Turning to threats, he said: “Some of these countries give their oil money to the arrogant powers so that it can be used against another country. But they must be aware that their days are numbers and one day, the oil money will be used against themselves.”
Was he setting the tone for the resumed nuclear talks opening in Istanbul Saturday, April 14, between his government and six world powers (US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany)?
Or reminding them that when sanctions were first imposed on Iran to counter its nuclear program oil sold at $25 the barrel whereas it has since soared to $110?
As for Iran’s Arab neighbors across the Gulf, Ahmadinejad was giving them an ominous geostrategic lesson:  Saudi Arabia was 1,034 kilometers away from Abu Musa and the Hormuz waterway which carried their oil to market, whereas Abu Musa was only 183.5 kilometers and bristling with a profusion of Iranian military hardware, notably sea-mines, explosives-packed speedboats and shore-to-sea missiles. They are all in position to block the Strait of Hormuz and strike at the lifelines of Gulf oil producers, their wells and infrastructure. No need to wage full-blown war on Saudi Arabia to bring disaster down on the world’s key oil-producing region.Therefore, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remark Thursday, April 12, that Tehran has sent “mixed signals, hinting toward a compromise” hardly connects with reality, unless she was referring to signals filtered
through secret channels.
The Iranian president was obviously crowing over Tehran’s success in preserving Syrian President Bashar Assad in power and vowing to make Gulf nations pay for backing his enemies.  
A large Saudi delegation headed by Defense Minister Prince Salman visited London and Washington this week. In addition to their top-level talks with President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron and their heads of defense, they also talked to British and US army chiefs dealing with the military side of the Persian Gulf. In London, Prince Salman had a long conversation with Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon Bryant and later in Washington with Gen. James Mattis and the president’s adviser on terror John O. Brennan.
Their focus of concern appeared to have shifted from a possible US or Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program and its consequences over to a potential clash between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
On Syria, Obama and Saudi King Abdullah are at odds. The former stands solidly against US military intervention against the Assad regime, whereas the latter is pressing for heightened Western and Arab military involvement in Syria including a supply of heavy weapons for the rebels fighting government forces. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was in Riyadh Wednesday but failed to convince the king to line up behind the Washington-Ankara policy on Syria.
With Iranian and Russian support, Assad has managed to turn the tables on Turkey. Friday’s Saudi newspaper Shawq al-Awsat mocked Ankara and its oft-repeated, never-fulfilled proposal to set up a buffer zone in Syria for refugees with a sarcastic headline: “Did al-Assad set up a buffer zone in Turkey?”
The first two days of the Syrian ceasefire, which was declared as part of UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan, were encouraging in that the number of deaths from violence declined from the horrendous norm. At the same time, outbreaks here and there were still current and Syrian troops and heavy weapons remained in the cities.
The UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon and peace envoy Kofi Annan are convinced that rushing UN observers into Syria and getting them on the ground will stabilize the ceasefire. But most Syria watchers are skeptical. Assad is firm in the saddle.
As for the Istanbul talks, DEBKAfile’s military sources report the conviction in the State Department that Iran is not coming to the table to resolve its nuclear dispute with the world, but rather as a toe in the water to gauge the strength of Obama’s resolve to terminate its nuclear program.  Iran’s resolve is unquestioned. As Ahmadinejad put it, “Iran will not retreat one iota from its nuclear rights.”
Like Syria and North Korea, Iran is gambling on Obama dropping back in time to avoid real confrontation with the Tehran-Moscow-Beijing line-up.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that North Korea is playing on the same pitch. Despite the breakup of the Unha-3 carrier rocket, supposedly to boost a satellite into orbit, shortly after takeoff from Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Tongchang-ri Thursday, April 13, North Korea has established four facts:
1. It is very close to the capacity for building multistage intercontinental ballistic missiles and will keep on conducting tests until the technology is fully mastered:
2.  Pyongyang is set for its third nuclear test;
3. It is well on the way to an ICBM with a nuclear warhead capable of reaching Washington and not just Tokyo;
4.   As it forges ahead, North Korea displays extreme indifference to the threats of world powers, United Nations censure or even the cancellation of US food aid just announced.
Its rulers are bucked up by the information reaching them about the mood in Washington - not from Chinese intelligence but American mainstream media. They agree that President Obama aims to woo the American voter by sounding tough but staying clear of military confrontations with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Bashar Assad and Kim Jong-un.
This posture was summed up succinctly by Leslie H. Gelb in the Daily Beast: “Typically, Mr. Obama is reacting like almost all his predecessors in presidential-election years: he is trying to simultaneously show strength and avoid war. He is walking the familiar tightrope…”
Going into critical talks in Istanbul Saturday with a tough customer like Iran on a tightrope, the US president wobbles over dangerous waters, say DEBKAfle’s sources:  A misjudgment could suddenly make him lose his balance; Iran, Syria or North Korea may push him off-balance; in his anxiety to avoid war, he may, as is often the case, cause one - maybe without American involvement but most certainly one that sets up high turbulence across the entire Middle East. 

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