| Russia rejects Assad exile plan, CIA ‘arming rebels’ |
MOSCOW Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that any Syria peace plan that calls on President Bashar Al Assad to leave power and go into exile would not work as he would not quit and The New York Times reported that a small number of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the government.
Also on Thursday, Jordan granted political asylum to a Syrian pilot hours after he landed his jet at a military air base in the kingdom, in the first such air force defection in the 15-month revolt. Syria denounced the pilot who defected as a “traitor” and said it wanted to recover the warplane he used to flee into neighbouring Jordan.
In another development, a senior Arab League official told Interfax news agency in an interview that Russia should halt arms sales to Syria and UN sanctions could be needed to force Assad and rebels fighting to oust him to implement a failing peace plan.
The UN observer mission in Syria should be replaced by peacekeepers, the League’s deputy secretary general Ahmed Ben Helli told Interfax news agency in an interview.
“Any assistance in aiding violence should be stopped. When you deliver military equipment you are helping to kill people. That should be stopped,” Interfax quoted him as saying in response to a question about Russian military ties with Syria.
In Vatican City, Pope Benedict XVI said Syria risks descending into a full-blown conflict which would affect the entire region even as the Syrian army was shelling central districts of Homs, residents said.
Lavrov did not explicitly say Russia opposed the idea but said it stood no chance of success because the Syrian strongman felt no need to step down despite 16 months of violence that has claimed more than 15,000 lives.
“President Putin laid out his logic, according to which we should have Syrians gather at a negotiating table,” the Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying in reference to their meeting on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Los Cabos.
“A scheme according to which Assad should leave somewhere before something happens in terms of a cessation of violence and a political process, this scheme simply does not work from the very start,” Lavrov said on Echo of Moscow radio. “It is infeasible because he will not leave.”
Weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some anti-tank weapons, are being funnelled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries, including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, The New York Times quoted American officials and Arab intelligence officers as saying.
The CIA officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said. The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels, but it has also acknowledged that Syria’s neighbours would do so.
The clandestine intelligence-gathering effort is the most detailed known instance of the limited American support for the military campaign against the Syrian government.
Spokesmen for the White House, State Department and CIA would not comment on any intelligence operations supporting the Syrian rebels, the report added.
Until now, the public face of the administration’s Syria policy has largely been diplomacy and humanitarian aid.
Agencies
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