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Tag: Damascus

  • Homemade Sarin Was Used In Attack Near Damascus

    Homemade Sarin Was Used In Attack Near Damascus – Lavrov

    By RT

    September 26, 2013 “Information Clearing House – Russia has enough evidence to assert that homemade sarin was used on August 21 in a chemical attack near Damascus, the same type but in higher concentration than in an Aleppo incident earlier this year, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov said.

    “On the occasion of the incident in the vicinity of Aleppo on March 19, 2013 when the United Nations, under the pressure of some Security Council members, didn’t respond to the request of the Syrian government to send inspectors to investigate, Russia, at the request of the Syrian government, investigated that case, and this report, i.e. the results of this investigation are broadly available to the Security Council and publicly,” Lavrov said.

    “The main conclusion is that the type of sarin used in that incident was homemade. We also have evidence to assert that the type of sarin used on August 21 was the same, only of higher concentration.”

    The minister said he had recently presented his US counterpart John Kerry with the latest compilation of evidence, which was an analysis of publicly available information.

    “The reports by the journalists who visited the sites, who talked to the combatants, combatants telling the journalists that they were given some unusual rockets and munitions by some foreign country and they didn’t know how to use them. You have also the evidence from the nuns serving in a monastery nearby who visited the site. You can read the evidence and the assessments by the chemical weapons experts who say that the images shown do not correspond to a real situation if chemical weapons were used. And we also know about an open letter sent to President Obama by former operatives of the CIA and the Pentagon saying that the assertion that it was the government that used the chemical weapons was a fake.”

    Lavrov emphasized that Russia stands fully committed to implementing the Geneva framework of September 14, a bilateral agreement with the United States to move forward with the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles under the Chemical Weapons Organization’s supervision.

    The foreign minister, however, reminded that the agreement did not suggest adopting any UN resolution that mentions immediate UN Chapter 7 measures against Syria, or rather the potential for the use of military force.

    “We set in that framework which we agreed in Geneva that we would be very serious about any violation of the obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, we would be very serious about any use of chemical weapons by anyone in Syria and that those issues would be brought to the Security Council under Chapter 7.”

    UN resolution within two days?

    The draft resolution to back Syria’s disarmament could be finalized “very soon,” possibly “within the next two days,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told the AP.

    Although the text of the resolution will include a reference to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, Gatilov stressed there will be “no automaticity in engaging” in military or non-military actions without a separate discussion at the UN Security Council.

    The five permanent members of the Security Council have yet to agree on a final text of the resolution, though the group has indicated significant progress is being made.

    Russian news agency Interfax rebutted earlier reports on Wednesday made by Western news agencies that claimed that a deal between the United States, Russia, France, China and Britain on wording of the draft resolution on destruction of chemical weapons in Syria had been reached.

    “The alleged report claiming that five Security Council agreed on the main part of the resolution on Syria is not true. The Russian delegation was extremely surprised by the appearance of such information,” a source from the Russian delegation told Interfax.

    #Russian UN delegation says reports that the #UNSC has agreed on a resolution are false. #Syria #UN @RT_America @RT_com

    — Anastasia Churkina (@NastiaChurkina) September 25, 2013

    “This is just their wishful thinking,” the spokesman for Russia’s UN delegation said. “It is not the reality. The work on the draft resolution is still going on,” quoted Reuters.

    Earlier AFP and Reuters had reported that three Western diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity indicated that the permanent members of the Security Council had agreed on a new proposal.

    “It seems that things are moving forward,” one source told Reuters, adding that there was “an agreement among the five on the core.” “We are closer on all the key points,” he said.

    The envoys told AFP that the draft resolution would allow for sanctions under Chapter 7 of the UN charter to be considered if President Bashar al-Assad fails to keep to a Russia-US disarmament plan.

    On Tuesday, on the sidelines of the UNGA US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a “constructive” meeting and agreed to continue pushing towards destruction of chemical weapons held by all sides in Syria under international supervision.

    © Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005–2013

    via Homemade Sarin Was Used In Attack Near Damascus – Lavrov.

  • Syria’s Assad hails Turkey anti-Erdogan opposition

    Syria’s Assad hails Turkey anti-Erdogan opposition

    display_imageDAMASCUS: President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday hailed Turkish opposition to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s backing for the revolt that began in Syria nearly two years ago, in a statement seen by AFP.

    The statement comes after Assad met a Turkish opposition delegation, which prompted Erdogan to issue a stinging criticism of the politicians, asking why they were meeting with “such a dictator.”

    Assad told the Republican People’s Party delegation there was “a need to distinguish between the stance of the Turkish people, who support stability in Syria, and the positions of Erdogan’s government, which supports terrorism, extremism and destabilisation in the region,” it said.

    “The Syrian people appreciates the position adopted by forces and parties in Turkey that reject the Erdogan government’s negative impact on our societies, which are multi-religious and multi-ethnic,” Assad said.

    The Turkish delegation, headed by Hassan Akgul, stressed “the Turkish people’s refusal to interfere in Syrian affairs, and a commitment to good neighbourly relations,” the statement said.

    The visitors also “warned of the risks of the Syrian crisis’s impact on Turkey and other countries in the region,” it added.

    Speaking on television, Erdogan asked: “Why is this country’s main opposition party sending its three lawmakers to meet with this dictator, this tyrant? What do they want to achieve?”

    Damascus, meanwhile, called on the international community in letters to the United Nations to condemn Ankara’s role in the Syrian conflict, which has left some 70,000 people dead.

    “Syria hopes that the international community… will fulfil its responsibilities clearly and sincerely, and denounce the role of the Turkish government and other states that fund the Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups, while bearing them responsible for what is happening in Syria,” the letters said.

    Assad’s government has systematically blamed the violence in Syria on a foreign-backed plot, and has frequently accused Turkey of channelling funds and weapons to the armed opposition.

    Reacting to the letters, Erdogan asked if Assad would “complain about Turkey to the United Nations just because we are accommodating 250,000 Syrians on our soil? This person is committing a kind of genocide there… Will he complain about us because of this?”

    Ankara broke off relations with Damascus soon after the outbreak of Syria’s uprising, which morphed into an armed insurgency after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent that began in mid-March 2011.

    Turkey hosts some 200,000 Syrians who fled the violence, and earlier this month it hosted a Syrian opposition election for Aleppo’s provincial council.

    – AFP/jc

    via Syria’s Assad hails Turkey anti-Erdogan opposition – Channel NewsAsia.

  • Syrian industry sues Turkey over ‘looting’

    Syrian industry sues Turkey over ‘looting’

    152195_mainimg

    A Syrian girl looks through the window of a bus where she has lived with her family for the past eight months at a refugee camp in Bab al-Salam on the Syria-Turkey border, on February 28, 2013. The United States said it would for the first time provide direct aid to Syrian rebels, but not the arms they had hoped for, as well as $60 million in extra assistance to the political opposition. AFP PHOTO/BRUNO GALLARDO

    DAMASCUS: Syria’s industry body has filed a case in a European court against the Turkish government for allegedly sponsoring terrorism and looting factories in strife-torn Syria, a report said Monday.

    The Syrian Chamber of Industry filed the case in an unspecified European country, and accused Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of backing armed gangs against the national interest of Syria, pro-regime daily Al-Watan reported.

    “This is a case aimed at asserting our rights, regardless of our political opinion,” Al-Watan quoted the chamber’s president, Fares Shehabi, as saying. He said that several Syrian unions had signed on to the complaint.

    “We have the necessary documents … to prove Erdogan’s obvious involvement in sponsoring acts of banditry and terrorism.”

    He said the chamber accused Erdogan of contributing to the “transfer of factory [machinery from Aleppo province in northern Syria] to Turkey,” and of “supporting armed gangs who are committing crimes against the national economy.”

    In January, Syria accused Turkey of plundering factories in Aleppo, once the country’s commercial hub, and called on the United Nations to help put a stop to the theft.

    “Some 1,000 factories in the city of Aleppo have been plundered, and their stolen goods transferred to Turkey with the full knowledge and facilitation of the Turkish government,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said then in letters sent to the U.N.

    Shehabi said the legal complaint was aimed at compelling Ankara to “change its policy toward Syria” and to bring back the stolen goods.

    Once allied to President Bashar Assad’s regime, Ankara broke ties with Damascus to support the revolt that erupted in March 2011.

     

    A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on March 05, 2013, on page 8.

    via Syrian industry sues Turkey over ‘looting’ | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.

  • Tourism: Turkish hotelier to take legal action against Syria

    Tourism: Turkish hotelier to take legal action against Syria

    dedeman latakia

    (ANSAmed) – ISTANBUL, JANUARY 19 – Syria has “a malignant attitude” toward the Dedeman Hotels International, as well as other Turkish and foreign businesses active in the country, according to a press release yesterday by the company, a Turkish hotelier, whose hotel operating contracts were canceled by the Syrian government, as daily Hurriyet reports today. Contracts that granted the Istanbul-based Dedeman the right to operate hotels in three Syrian cities were canceled by the Syrian government in the last four weeks. The first contract regarding Dedeman Hotel Aleppo was canceled December 29, 2011, and contracts regarding Dedeman’s Damascus and Tadmur hotels were canceled Januariy 17, according to Sana, Syria’s official news agency. Dedeman has not yet received any official notice from Syria about the cancellations, the company said. “It is saddening to reflect its domestic political developments in business life this way. We will take every step to protect our legal rights,” said Tamer Yorukoglu, Dedeman Hotels & Resorts International CEO. Dedeman could not meet forecasts envisaged in the auction process due to an economic crisis that started in 2009 and the instability caused by the political developments which came about from the beginning of last year, Dedeman said.

    The renovation of three hotels had be assumed by the Syrian Ministry of Tourism according to the contracts, but the obligation was fulfilled by the ministry, said the company, adding that renovation project for those three hotels was submitted to the tourism ministry, but no positive move was made. (ANSAmed).

  • Turkey Plans Military Exercise on Syrian Border

    By AYLA ALBAYRAK

    ISTANBUL—Turkey said on Tuesday that it would hold military exercises close to the Syrian border and that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would disclose steps to be taken against Damascus when he visits refugee camps in the area in the coming days.

    The moves came as Col. Riad al As’ad, a former Syrian military officer, reported to have been detained by Turkey and handed over to Damascus, surfaced in Turkey and denied the reports.

    The Turkish armed forces said on its website Tuesday that it would conduct military exercises in Hatay province, close to the Syrian border, from Wednesday through Oct. 13. The exercise, which the website called routine, would involve a mechanized brigade and some 700 reservists.

    “We cannot remain spectators to developments in Syria any longer. There are serious deaths and (attacks) against innocent, oppressed people,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters during a visit to South Africa on Tuesday, Turkey’s state news agency, Anadolu Ajansi, reported.

    Mr. Erdogan expressed Turkey’s support for a draft resolution on Syria at the United Nations Security Council. He also said he would visit camps in Hatay where some 7,500 Syrians have taken refuge from turmoil across the border, either this weekend or next week.

    “Then we will make our assessment as Turkey and make a statement,” Mr. Erdogan said, Anadolu reported. A Turkish official said it remained uncertain whether that would involve sanctions.

    Turkish officials feel under pressure to act, given the lack of further options available to governments in the U.S. and Europe. Ankara is enforcing an arms embargo, but has been reluctant to impose economic sanctions that might harm primarily Turkish and Syrian businessmen, rather than the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey exported $1 billion of goods to Syria in the first six months of the year, slightly up from the year-earlier period despite the turmoil, according to figures from the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly.

    Turkey’s government had exceptionally warm relations with the Assad regime—the Erdogan and Assad families even went on vacation together in 2008—but relations turned sour this year when Mr. Assad ignored Turkish pressure to end the crackdown on opponents and institute changes.

    Col. As’ad, who defected and fled to Turkey about three months ago, leads Syria’s main military defectors group, the Free Syrian Army, after merging it with another dissident army group last month, said Omar Idlibi, a spokesperson for the Local Coordination Committees, an activist network.

    Col. As’ad combined his group with the Free Officers Movement, led by Col. Hussein Harmoush and based in Turkey along the Syrian border. That group was dealt a serious setback in September when Col. Harmoush appeared on Syrian state television, appearing to confess that his movement didn’t actually exist.

    Activists say they believe he was either tricked back into Syria by covert intelligence officers, where he was captured by forces there, or handed over by Turkish authorities.

    “We did not hand over anyone,” said a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry. He said the rumors had begun in the Syrian press when Col. As’ad became ill and was taken by ambulance from his refugee camp to a hospital, accompanied by Turkish health officials.

    Col. As’ad said Tuesday that he was living unmolested in Turkey, Anadolu reported. “Turkish authorities have not applied any pressure or violence on us,” he said.

    Army defectors have multiplied in recent weeks and are increasingly claiming responsibility for attacks on security forces. Last week, activists said defectors in al-Rastan, a town north of Homs, destroyed about a dozen tanks. Dissident soldiers, mostly low-ranking Sunni conscripts, say they are keeping their light weapons with them and urging other soldiers to defect to protect civilians. There haven’t yet been any announced defections from higher-ranking Alawite soldiers, who form the military’s backbone and are Assad loyalists.

    —Nour Malas in Dubai and Marc Champion in Istanbul contributed to this article.

    via Turkey Plans Military Exercise on Syrian Border – WSJ.com.

  • Turkey’s friendship with Syria nears breaking point

    Turkey’s friendship with Syria nears breaking point

    By Simon Cameron-Moore

    ISTANBUL | Mon Aug 8, 2011 11:31am EDT

    ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s friendship with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stood near breaking point as Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu prepared to visit Damascus on Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to persuade Assad to stop his security forces attacking civilians.

    On Sunday, one of Assad’s advisers warned Davutoglu would be given short shrift after Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said his minister would deliver a “decisive message,” having seen past entreaties to halt the violence ignored.

    A Turkish official said Davutoglu would repeat the earlier calls. But the official did not want to venture into what Turkey will do if its words continue to fall on deaf ears in neighboring Syria.

    Still, if Davutoglu returns empty-handed, Erdogan faces the prospect of ditching a friendship he has carefully nurtured over the past decade, leaving Assad more isolated and dependent on Iranian support than ever.

    Bahadir Dincer, Middle East expert at the International Strategic Research Organization in Ankara, said he expected no change from the Syrian government given the comments from Damascus ahead of Davutoglu’s visit.

    “Turkey will have to seriously consider its ties with Syria,” Dincer said. “It has been a white page for a decade now, The recent tension turned it grey, and we’ll see tomorrow if the relations are entering a red-page era.”

    Having almost gone to war in the late 1990s over Syria harboring Kurdish militants, the friendship became a virtual poster-child for Erdogan’s foreign policy of “zero problems with neighbors.”

    Erdogan has holidayed with Assad, their cabinets have held joint meetings, Turkey has become Syria’s biggest trading partner, the neighbors have visa-free travel between them, and Turkey tried to broker a peace deal between Syria and Israel.

    NO GOING OUT ON A LIMB

    The relationship with Syria has withered as Erdogan tried to encourage Assad, in vain, to make democratic reforms and end the repressive one-party rule of his Baath movement.

    Events in the Arab Spring of popular protests, according to Sinan Ulgen in a paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, have shown Ankara now wants to be on the right side of history and is ready to stand up for issues like human rights even where it imperils ties with incumbent leaders.

    The patience Erdogan has shown so far with Assad stands in contrast to the speed with which he advised Hosni Mubarak to quit as president of Egypt when street protests erupted there early this year, but that patience appears to have run out.

    There is genuine outrage in Turkey, a largely secular Muslim country like Syria but also a multi-party democracy, over the brutal repression unleashed since pro-democracy demonstrations erupted in the neighboring Arab state last March.

    In June, after more than 10,000 Syrians fled to Turkey to escape attacks by security forces, Erdogan described the killing of Syrian civilians as acts of savagery.

    Yet, his government — like Syria’s Arab neighbors, however upset they have become about Assad’s behavior, underlined by the recall of several Gulf ambassadors on Monday — is unlikely to take any unilateral action against Damascus, according to analysts of Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East.

    With the international community divided over what to do about Syria, Turkey is unlikely to go out on a limb, either through economic sanctions or military action.

    “Turkey will not go to the lengths of unilateral economic sanctions. It has always argued that sanctions hurt people, not regimes,” said Semih Idiz, a columnist focused on foreign policy at Milliyet newspaper.

    One big investment that could be vulnerable to a freeze in bilateral relations is a joint multi-billion-dollar dam project dubbed “Friendship Dam,” whose groundbreaking was attended by leaders of the two countries in February.

    Turkey is also likely to resist any pressure to create a buffer zone inside Syrian territory, though it is reportedly a scenario that the Turkish military has made contingencies for.

    “Turkey will not do anything unilateral militarily unless there is a massive spillover effect from what’s happening in Syria — a spillover of a humanitarian nature, or a threat to national security,” Idiz said.

    Other analysts said Turkey should avoid being drawn into any military intervention in Syria just to please Western powers, as it would backfire on efforts to end ethnic Kurds’ long-running insurgency in southeast Turkey.

    “Turkey may limit its trade and diplomatic ties with Syria. But, even if Turkey doesn’t take such steps, its clear message and attitude toward the Syrian administration will be a boost of morale to protesters,” Dincer said.

    Syrians living in exile have flocked to Turkey, without any apparent encouragement from the Turkish government, for a series of meetings aimed at uniting opposition to Assad.

    Any move by Turkish officials to engage the Syrian opposition would further alienate Damascus from Ankara.

    And whereas Saudi Arabia withdrew its envoy to Damascus on Monday, Idiz doubted whether Turkey would want to be seen following Riyadh’s lead, lest its actions be seen through any sectarian prism.

    Assad and the ruling clique in the Ba’athist Party hail from Syria’s minority Alawite community, a sect close to Iran’s dominant Shi’ites, while the majority of Syrians are Sunni.

    Mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia sent troops to Bahrain in March to help stifle unrest among the emirate’s Shi’ite majority.

    While most of Turkey’s population are also Sunni, it also has a small Alawite minority, and Erdogan’s government has steadfastly sought to avoid stirring sectarian issues.

    Last Friday, Davutoglu said it was too soon to talk about asking the Syrian ambassador to Ankara to leave.

    via Turkey’s friendship with Syria nears breaking point | Reuters.