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U.S. sends Army planners to Amman but wary of Syria intervention

April 17, 2013 19:46
By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is dispatching Army planners to Jordan as neighbouring Syria's conflict worsens, U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Wednesday, but he signalled deep misgivings about direct American military intervention in the Syrian civil war. Hagel told a Senate hearing that the United States has an obligation to think through the consequences of any U.S. military move in Syria and be honest about potential long-term commitments.

Russian foreign minister tells West "don't isolate Assad"

April 17, 2013 16:15
By Daren Butler ISTANBUL (Reuters) - In an implicit warning to international supporters of Syrian opposition forces, Russia's foreign minister said on Wednesday that efforts to isolate one side in the conflict would wreck the chances of a negotiated solution and help militant Islamists. Sergei Lavrov said the Friends of Syria group, which is meeting in Istanbul this weekend, had so far had a negative influence on implementing a 2012 accord among world powers aimed at resolving the war through talks among all sides.

Brahimi eyes new U.N. envoy role in Syria, dropping Arab League - envoys

April 16, 2013 20:15
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N.-Arab League Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi hopes to revamp his role as an international peace mediator in the Syrian conflict as a United Nations envoy without any official link to the Arab bloc, U.N. diplomats said on Tuesday. Brahimi has become increasingly frustrated with the league's moves to recognize the Syrian opposition, which he feels has undermined his role as a neutral mediator, diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Brahimi eyes new U.N. envoy role in Syria, dropping Arab League - envoys

April 16, 2013 20:15
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N.-Arab League Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi hopes to revamp his role as an international peace mediator in the Syrian conflict as a United Nations envoy without any official link to the Arab bloc, U.N. diplomats said on Tuesday. Brahimi has become increasingly frustrated with the league's moves to recognize the Syrian opposition, which he feels has undermined his role as a neutral mediator, diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Syria's Assad cuts jail terms, activists not satisfied

April 16, 2013 05:15
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad cut prisoners' sentences on Tuesday to mark a national holiday but activists said it was a meaningless gesture without the release of thousands of political detainees believed to be held in his jails. The move reduced prison terms of inmates held for both crimes and misdemeanours and also cut by a quarter the jail terms of "Syrians who had joined the terrorists" - the term used by the government to describe the rebels trying to topple Assad.

Activists say Syrian airstrike kills 12 civilians

April 15, 2013 17:33
Activists say a Syrian government airstrike on a town in the country's northwest has killed at least 12 civilians. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group says the air raid struck the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province on Saturday. The Observatory says four of the dead were members of the same family. The regime's air power is its biggest advantage in the civil war, and it has used its warplanes to try to check rebel advances.

Wounded Syrians flown to Germany for care

April 15, 2013 15:21
Germany on Monday airlifted more than 30 badly wounded Syrian refugees from Jordan for medical care in its hospitals in what it called a "humanitarian gesture" amid the bloody civil war. The injured, among them women and children, were flown aboard a specially equipped air force plane and were to be transferred to four German military hospitals in cities including Berlin and Hamburg. "The civil war in Syria has already claimed far too many lives," said Westerwelle at a press conference with Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi.

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood denies extremist control in Syria

April 15, 2013 09:30
Syria's Muslim Brotherhood sought here on Monday to defuse fears that Islamist extremists were seizing Syrian territory, saying that a "united front" controlled land captured by the rebels. "It is not true that extremists are in charge of liberated lands," their leader Mohammad Riad Shakfa said at a press conference in Istanbul. "The land ... belongs to a united front of the opposition." Speaking in Arabic, he added: "As far as I know, there is no extremism in Syria."

Syria warplanes pound Damascus

April 15, 2013 09:30
Syria's air force launched several air strikes on rebel enclaves in and around Damascus, while fresh clashes between troops and rebels raged to the east of the capital, a monitoring group said on Monday. "At least one civilian was killed in an air strike on Qaboon" in northeastern Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, "while regime troops pounded the district of Jubar" in the east.

Wounded Syrians to be flown to Germany for care

April 15, 2013 09:03
A specially equipped German military aircraft will head to Jordan on Monday to pick up 36 Syrians who were seriously wounded in the conflict in their country and fly them to Germany for treatment, the foreign ministry said. The wounded Syrians will receive care at four army hospitals including facilities in Berlin and Hamburg, a ministry spokesman said. "We are deeply affected by the thousands of dead and the still bigger number of wounded which the terrible civil war in Syria has claimed up to now," Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement.
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