Syria warned against using chemical weapons
Syria's civil war has entered uncharted territory, with the alarming possibility that the regime may use chemical weapons against its opponents.
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Syria’s civil war has entered uncharted territory, with the alarming possibility that the regime may use chemical weapons against its opponents, and neighbouring Turkey demanding that NATO send missiles as protection against Syrian aggression.
American intelligence reports have indicated that the Syrian government has been moving “components” of chemical weapons around “more than one” site in recent days, unidentified U.S. defence officials told the Associated Press and the New York Times.
Details about the type of weapons and their locations are vague but the warning to Syria on Monday came swift and clear. The American administration warned President Bashar Assad that the use of chemical weapons was a red line that could provoke U.S. action.
“The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable,” President Barack Obama said in a speech. “And if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable.”
Contingency plans were being prepared, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters, refusing to elaborate on what they might be.
“I’m not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people,” she said. “But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.
“Their actions against their own people have been tragic. But there is no doubt that there is a line between even the horrors that they have already inflicted on the Syrian people and moving to what would be an internationally condemned step of utilizing their chemical weapons.”
Syria’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it would not use chemical weapons, if they existed, against its citizens under any circumstances.
The conflict is at risk of engulfing the region.
The Turkish government is worried about Syria’s ballistic missiles, which could carry chemical weapons, and is asking NATO to deploy Patriot surface-to-air missiles inside Turkey as a defence. NATO member countries are expected to decide during meetings in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Ankara has sent jets several times to the border during the 21-month-old conflict, as shells have come flying into Turkey.
Turkey, which is demanding that Assad resign, is allowing insurgents to cross the border into Syria, and a rebel commander to operate freely in a refugee camp inside Turkey. There is a growing sense of fear that Syria could attack, said Hugh Pope, Turkey and Cyprus project director for the International Crisis Group think-tank.
“There is nervousness in Turkey about the escalation of the conflict in Syria and a way of making it seem like everything is going to be OK is Patriot missiles,” he told The Star in an interview from Istanbul. “It also brings in an element of NATO protection for Turkey.”
But Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country is backing the Syrian regime, warned any deployment of Patriot missiles increased the risk of the war spreading through the region.
“We share Turkey’s concern about the developments on the border. But we are calling for restraint because increasing military potential will not settle the situation but create the opposite effect,” he said after a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Associated Press reported.
Israel, which is technically at war with Syria, has expressed concerns in the past that chemical weapons could fall into the hands of its enemy Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Syrian ally, or that the regime could fire such a weapon into the Jewish state.
In Lebanon, soldiers clashed with Syrian rebels near the Bekaa valley on Sunday after insurgents fired on the troops, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.
Syria may have chemical-capable artillery shells, SS-21 missiles that can carry chemical warheads, sarin nerve agents and mustard agents, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an independent organization based in Washington, D.C., that aims to reduce threat of nuclear weapons.
But little is actually known about Syria’s chemical weapons program and the regime denies its existence. No inspection of its sites can be carried out because Syria is not a party to the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which would legally prohibit it from developing, stockpiling or using chemical weapons, said Michael Luhan, spokesman for The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which enforces the convention.
However, Syria is signatory to the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which forbids the use of chemical weapons under any circumstances.
“And so both our senior officials and senior officials at the United Nations have communicated that directly to the Syrian regime, that any use, or contemplation of use of chemical weapons would be a very serious situation indeed,” Luhan said in an interview from The Hague.
In 1983, Amnesty International accused Syria, then ruled by Assad’s late father Hafez, of using cyanide gas during a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the city of Hama that left as many as 20,000 dead. Amnesty said Syrian troops connected rubber pipes to chemical gas tanks and pumped the gas into buildings.
Meanwhile, fighting has been intensifying around Damascus and its airport as the military tries to seal off the capital. The United Nations on Monday suspended all aid operations across Syria until further notice. As many as 25 non-essential international staff may be evacuated this week, a spokesman said. Humanitarian aid convoys were being attacked or hijacked, and aid workers were caught in the crossfire. So far, eight UN workers have been killed in the conflict.
On Monday, fighting in Damascus left 27 civilians dead. The worst hit areas are the southern districts held by rebels, according to Susan Ahmad, a spokeswoman for the rebel Revolution Council in Damascus.
“There were clashes on the way close to the airport and the regime forces are attacking districts near the airport,” she said in an interview from Damascus.
“The regime is using MiG jets, heavy artillery, rocket launchers and tanks. The worst is cluster bombs thrown by warplanes,” she said, adding that cluster bombs were dropped into the Al Hajar Al Aswad area of Damascus.
Ahmad, who does not use her real name because the government is hunting down activists, said in southern parts of the capital there were no basic supplies, including bread and gasoline. It is not possible to independently verify reports by rebels because of the difficulties of reporting from Syria.
So far the conflict has killed more than 40,000 people. It has created more than 1.2 million internal refugees, half of whom are children, and forced nearly 250,000 refugees to flee to Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan, according to UN figures.
Children are bearing the brunt of the misery. A report issued by Save the Children said funding shortages are hampering relief efforts in refugee camps as snow and sub-zero temperatures close in. In Iraq, most children only have the flip-flops in which they fled, while in Lebanon some refugees have only tarpaulin tents to sleep under, the report said.
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