Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses. Obama Warns Assad of US Military Intervention If Chemical Weapons Are Moved or Used   “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is (if) we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” Obama said. “That would change my calculus. Obama warns Assad over use of chemical weapons Barack Obama threatened Bashar al-Assad with military intervention for the first time on Monday, warning any attempt by Syria to deploy its chemical and biological weapons against rebel fighters would cross a “red line” for the US. BRAHIMI MEETS FRANCOIS HOLLANDE IN PARIS By Aurore Cloe DUPUIS in Paris   Syria reacted angrily on Monday to comments made by new international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi (photo), who told FRANCE 24 that the country had already entered into a civil war. By FRANCE 24 (video) FRANCE 24 (text) BRAHIMI MEETS FRANCOIS HOLLANDE IN PARIS By Aurore Cloe DUPUIS in Paris Syria's Assad makes rare appearance for Eid prayers Syrian president Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance on Sunday to join prayers at a Damascus mosque to mark the Muslim celebration of Eid. The religious holiday saw anti-Assad activists stage protests across the country.   SYRIA FRANCE 24 EXCLUSIVE On the frontline in Damascus

Obama warns Assad over use of chemical weapons

Barack Obama threatened Bashar al-Assad with military intervention for the first time on Monday, warning any attempt by Syria to deploy its chemical and biological weapons against rebel fighters would cross a “red line” for the US.

France 24, August 21, 2012

By News Wires (text)

REUTERS -

President Barack Obama on Monday threatened U.S. military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, warning in the strongest terms yet that any attempt to deploy or use chemical or biological weapons would cross a “red line” for the United States.

Pointing out that he had refrained “at this point” from ordering U.S. military engagement in Syria’s bloody conflict, Obama said that there would be “enormous consequences” if Assad failed to safeguard his weapons of mass destruction.

It was Obama’s most explicit language to date on the prospects for military intervention, and he warned Syria not only against using its unconventional weapons, but against moving them in a threatening fashion.

Japanese journalist killed in Syria

Japan's foreign ministry confirmed Tuesday that a woman reporter had been killed in Syria as she was reporting on the conflict-wracked country. The ministry confirmed the reporter was Mika Yamamoto, 45, said an official in charge of Japanese nationals' safety abroad. "She was reporting in Aleppo, northern Syria, when she was caught in gunfire," the official said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had earlier reported that an unnamed Japanese female journalist had died in Aleppo, the scene of heavy fighting in recent days and weeks, and three other reporters were missing. (AFP)

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is (if) we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” Obama said. “That would change my calculus.

“We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people,” Obama told an impromptu White House news conference. He acknowledged he was not “absolutely confident” the stockpile was secure.

Obama said the issue was of concern not only to Washington but also to its close allies in the region, including Israel.

He said the United States was putting together a “range of contingency plans” but offered no details.

The United States and its allies are discussing a worst-case scenario that could require tens of thousands of ground troops to go into Syria to secure chemical and biological weapons sites following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, U.S. and diplomatic officials told Reuters last week.

These secret discussions assume that all of Assad’s security forces disintegrate, leaving chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria vulnerable to pillaging. The scenario also assumes these sites could not be secured or destroyed solely through aerial bombings, given health and environmental risks.

But a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to explain the sensitive discussions, said the United States still had no plans to put troops in Syria. Resisting US military commitment Obama, who is seeking re-election in November, has been reluctant to get the United States involved in another war in the Middle East, even refusing to arm rebels fighting a 17-month-old uprising against Assad.

BRAHIMI MEETS FRANCOIS HOLLANDE IN PARIS By Aurore Cloe DUPUIS in Paris

Syria last month acknowledged for the first time that it had chemical and biological weapons and said it could use them if foreign countries intervene - a threat that drew strong warnings from Washington and its allies.

Western countries and Israel have expressed fears chemical weapons could fall into the hands of militant groups as Assad’s authority erodes.

Israel has said that if Syrian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas used the situation to take control of the weapons, it would “act immediately and with utmost force.”

“We’re monitoring that situation very carefully,” Obama said when asked whether he envisioned the possibility of using U.S. forces at least to safeguard Syria’s chemical arsenal.

The Global Security website, which collects published intelligence reports and other data, says there are four suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria: north of Damascus, near Homs, in Hama and near the Mediterranean port of Latakia. Weapons it produces include the nerve agents VX, sarin and tabun, it said, without citing its sources.

Obama also used the opportunity to renew his call for Assad to step down.

“The international community has sent a clear message that rather than drag his country into civil war, he should move in the direction of a political transition,” Obama said. “But at this point, the likelihood of a soft landing seems pretty distant.”

Obama said the United States already had provided $82 million in humanitarian assistance for Syrian refugees and “we’ll probably end up doing a little bit more” to keep the situation from destabilizing Syria’s neighbors.

Syria slams UN envoy over comments to FRANCE 24

Syria reacted angrily on Monday to comments made by new international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi (photo), who told FRANCE 24 that the country had already entered into a civil war.

By FRANCE 24 (video) FRANCE 24 (text)

Syria dismissed comments by new international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Monday, who described the country’s 17-month conflict as “civil war” in an interview with FRANCE 24 the previous day.

"To speak of civil war in Syria contradicts reality and is found only in the head of conspirators," the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement published by the official SANA news agency.

BRAHIMI MEETS FRANCOIS HOLLANDE IN PARIS By Aurore Cloe DUPUIS in Paris

The statement was made after Algerian diplomat Brahimi told FRANCE 24 in a televised interview that Syria had already entered the throes of civil war. "There are a lot of people who say that we must avoid civil war in Syria. Me, I believe that it has already been the case for some time. What we need to do is to stop the civil war and that is not going to be easy," he said.

"A civil war, it is the cruellest kind of conflict,” he continued. “When a neighbour kills his neighbour and sometimes his brother, it is the worst of conflicts."

The Syrian uprising, which began in March 2011, has caused the deaths of 23,000 people according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The United Nations puts the death toll at 17,000.

Brahimi, appointed by the UN Security Council to replace Kofi Annan, who resigned earlier this month, is a veteran Algerian diplomat who is supported by both the West and Assad's traditional allies Russia and China.

Brahimi met François Hollande on Monday in his first talks with a foreign leader since taking up the post last week. “I am in listening mode,” he told the French president.

 

Syria's Assad makes rare appearance for Eid prayers

France 24, August 21, 2012

By News Wires (text)

AFP -

President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance for the Muslim holiday of Eid on Sunday as activists staged protests across Syria to rage against the regime.

The new UN peace envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said it is no longer a question of "preventing civil war" in Syria but rather stopping it.

Assad joined prayers at a Damascus mosque for the Eid al-Fitr festival, his first appearance in a public place since a bomb blast last month killed four top security officials, although he has been seen on television since then.

But despite the religious holiday, his forces were still in deadly action on the ground, shelling several rebel hubs and clashing with opposition fighters in Damascus itself, a monitoring group said.

Six children, one as young as five and including four from the same extended family, were killed by shelling near their home in the rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan in the northwestern province of Idlib, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In all, at least 56 people -- including 22 civilians -- were killed on the first day of Eid, the festival celebrated by Muslims to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan, the Britain-based group said.

UN observers were winding up their troubled mission on Sunday in the face of the escalating violence and a failure by world powers to agree on how to tackle Assad and bring about peace to the strategically vital Middle East state.

Syrians joined prayers and staged demonstrations for Eid, taking place for the second year under the shadow of a conflict the Observatory says has now claimed 23,000 lives while the UN gives a death toll of 17,000.

"Eid is here, Eid is here, God curse you, O Bashar," protesters in Qudsaya in Damascus province sang to the tune of Jingle Bells, according to amateur video posted on YouTube.

"There is no Eid for Bashar, nothing is holy for him. They are willing to strike anywhere, mosques, hospitals, bakeries, children. What kind of Eid is this?" Abu Issa, a 39-year-old builder in Aleppo, asked an AFP correspondent.

Several families said they would not make the traditional visit to cemeteries to place flowers on the tombs of departed loved ones because of security fears.

"The children in the Old City district are sad because there are no sweets, no food, no gifts, no new clothes this Eid," added a young man from the central city of Homs who gave his name as Abu Bilal.

While demonstrators called for the fall of the regime, Assad himself joined top government and ruling Baath party officials at Eid prayers in Al-Hamad mosque.

"Syria will triumph against the Western-American plot being supported by the Wahhabis and takfiris," or Sunni Muslim hardliners, said imam Sheikh Mohammed Kheir Ghantus, echoing the regime's long-standing rhetoric.

Assad, from the minority Alawite community of an offshoot of Shia Islam, has characterised the conflict as a battle against a foreign "terrorist" plot aided by the West and its allies in the region, led by Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia.

German and British spies

Press reports said on Sunday that British and German spies were involved in covert operations to help Syrian rebels.

"We can be proud of the significant contribution we are making to the fall of the Assad regime," an official from Germany's BND foreign intelligence service told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

The paper said German spies were stationed on a boat off the Syrian coast and also active at a NATO base in Turkey, a one-time Syria ally whose government is now staunchly opposed to Assad and is sheltering Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels.


Britain's Sunday Times said British intelligence was helping rebels launch successful attacks on government forces with information gathered from their listening posts in nearby Cyprus.

It said the most valuable intelligence has been about the movements of troops towards Aleppo, the scene of fierce fighting.

The UN observer mission was due to end at midnight on Sunday, just days after new international envoy Brahimi was named to replace Kofi Annan.

Brahimi, a veteran Algerian diplomat, has won support from the West as well as China and Russia, and even Syria itself, although the White House said it would be seeking clarifications on the terms of his mandate.

"A civil war, it is the cruellest kind of conflict, when a neighbour kills his neighbour and sometimes his brother, it is the worst of conflicts," Brahimi said in an interview with France 24 television in Paris.

"There are a lot of people who say that we must avoid civil war in Syria, me I believe that we are already there for some time now. What's necessary is to stop the civil war and that is not going to be easy."

Turkish authorities on Sunday crossed the Syrian border to distribute humanitarian aid to hundreds of Syrians who have been forced from their homes and are massed at the border, emergency officials in the region said.

The authorities handed out food and other supplies just across the border from the southern Turkish town of Reyhanli, officials told Turkey's Anatolia news agency.

What began in March 2011 as a peaceful uprising has descended into an armed revolt with fighting reaching the two main cities of Damascus and Aleppo and atrocities reported on both sides, but particularly by the regime.

The West is demanding that Assad step down as part of any political deal but is opposed by Syria's traditional allies in Moscow and Beijing which see it as foreign-imposed regime change.