US weighing military options if Syria uses WMD

Czech Republic’s For­eign Min­is­ter Karel Schwarzen­berg, left, and US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, right, arrive for their press con­fer­ence Mon­day in Prague, Czech Repub­lic. Sec­re­tary of State Clin­ton is lob­by­ing the Czech Repub­lic author­i­ties to approve an Amer­i­can con­tract bid for an expan­sion of a nuclear power plant. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Petr David Josek)

KIMBERLY DOZIER

PAULINE JELINEK

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The White House and its allies are weigh­ing mil­i­tary options to secure Syria’s chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, after U.S. intel­li­gence reports show the Syr­ian regime may be ready­ing those weapons and may be des­per­ate enough to use them, U.S. offi­cials said Monday.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, in a speech at the National Defense Uni­ver­sity on Mon­day, point­edly warned Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad not to use his arsenal.

“Today I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his com­mand: The world is watch­ing,” Obama said. “The use of chem­i­cal weapons is and would be totally unac­cept­able. And if you make the tragic mis­take of using these weapons, there will be con­se­quences and you will be held accountable.”

Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, in Prague for meet­ings with Czech offi­cials, said she wouldn’t out­line any specifics.

“But suf­fice it to say, we are cer­tainly plan­ning to take action if that even­tu­al­ity were to occur,” Clin­ton said.

Options now being con­sid­ered range from aer­ial strikes to lim­ited raids by regional forces to secure the stock­piles, accord­ing to one cur­rent U.S. offi­cial, and one for­mer U.S. offi­cial, briefed on the mat­ter. The offi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to dis­cuss the issue publicly.

The admin­is­tra­tion remains reluc­tant to dis­patch U.S. forces into Syria, but a U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions train­ing team is in neigh­bor­ing Jor­dan, teach­ing troops there how to safely secure such sites together with other troops from the region, the offi­cials said.

The warn­ings to Syria come after U.S. intel­li­gence detected signs the Syr­ian regime was mov­ing the chem­i­cal weapons com­po­nents around within sev­eral of Syria’s chem­i­cal weapons sites in recent days, accord­ing to a senior U.S. defense offi­cial and two U.S. offi­cials speak­ing on Mon­day. The activ­i­ties involved move­ment within the sites, rather than the trans­fer of com­po­nents in or out of var­i­ous sites, two of the offi­cials said.

But they were activ­i­ties they had not seen before, that bear fur­ther scrutiny, one said.

Another senior U.S. offi­cial described it as “indi­ca­tions of prepa­ra­tions” for a pos­si­ble use of the chem­i­cal weapons. The U.S. still doesn’t know whether the regime is plan­ning to use them, but the offi­cial says there is greater con­cern because there is the sense that the Assad regime is under greater pres­sure now.

The offi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to speak pub­licly about intel­li­gence matters.

U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials also inter­cepted one com­mu­ni­ca­tion within the last six months they believe was between Iran’s infa­mous Quds Force, urg­ing Syr­ian regime mem­bers to use its sup­plies of toxic Sarin gas against rebels and the civil­ians sup­port­ing them in the besieged city of Homs, a for­mer U.S. offi­cial said. That report was not matched by other intel­li­gence agen­cies, and other intel­li­gence offi­cials have said Iran also does not want the Syr­i­ans to use their chem­i­cal weapons.

The Assad regime insists it would not use such weapons against Syr­i­ans, though it care­fully does not admit to hav­ing them. The Min­istry of For­eign Affairs said the gov­ern­ment “would not use chem­i­cal weapons — if there are any — against its own peo­ple under any cir­cum­stances.” The regime is party to the 1925 Geneva Pro­to­col ban­ning chem­i­cal weapons in war.

The Syr­ian assur­ances did not pla­cate the White House.

“We are con­cerned that in an increas­ingly belea­guered regime, hav­ing found its esca­la­tion of vio­lence through con­ven­tional means inad­e­quate, might be con­sid­er­ing the use of chem­i­cal weapons against the Syr­ian peo­ple,” said White House press sec­re­tary Jay Carney.

“Assad has killed so many of his peo­ple, I just wouldn’t be sur­prised if he turned these weapons on them,” added Mary­land Rep. Dutch Rup­pers­berger, the top Demo­c­rat on the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, after intel­li­gence brief­ings Monday.

An admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said the trig­ger for U.S. action of some kind is the use of chem­i­cal weapons, or move­ment with the intent to use them, or the intent to pro­vide them to a ter­ror­ist group like Hezbol­lah. The U.S. is try­ing to deter­mine whether the recent move­ment detected in Syria falls into any of those cat­e­gories, the offi­cial said. The admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial was speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity because this per­son was not autho­rized to speak pub­licly about the issue.

Israeli offi­cials have repeat­edly expressed con­cerns that Syr­ian chem­i­cal weapons could slip into the hands of Hezbol­lah or other anti-Israel groups, or even be fired toward Israel in an act of des­per­a­tion by Syria.

Syria has some 75 sites where weapons are stored, but U.S. offi­cials aren’t sure they have tracked down all the loca­tions, and fear some stock­piles may have already been moved. Syria is believed to have sev­eral hun­dred bal­lis­tic surface-to-surface mis­siles capa­ble of car­ry­ing chem­i­cal war­heads, plus sev­eral tons of mate­r­ial stored in either large drums, or in artillery shells, which become deadly once fired.

“In Syria, they have every­thing from mus­tard agent, Sarin nerve gas, and some vari­ant of the nerve agent VX,” accord­ing to James Quin­li­van, a Rand Corp. ana­lyst who spe­cial­izes in the elim­i­na­tion of weapons of mass destruction.

A pri­mary argu­ment against send­ing in U.S. ground troops is that who­ever takes pos­ses­sion of the chem­i­cal weapons will be respon­si­ble for destroy­ing them, as part of the 1997 Chem­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion. Destroy­ing Syria’s stock­piles could cost hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, and take more than a decade, Quin­li­van said.

Syria’s arse­nal is a par­tic­u­lar threat to the Amer­i­can allies, Turkey and Israel, and Obama sin­gled out the threat posed by the uncon­ven­tional weapons ear­lier this year as a poten­tial cause for deeper U.S. involve­ment in Syria’s civil war. Up to now, the United States has opposed mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion or pro­vid­ing arms sup­port to Syria’s rebels for fear of fur­ther mil­i­ta­riz­ing a con­flict that activists say has killed more than 40,000 peo­ple since March 2011.

Activ­ity has been detected at Syr­ian weapons sites before.

Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta said in late Sep­tem­ber the intel­li­gence sug­gested the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment had moved some of its chem­i­cal weapons in order to pro­tect them. He said the U.S. believed that the main sites remained secure.

Asked Mon­day if they were still con­sid­ered secure, Pen­ta­gon press sec­re­tary George Lit­tle declined to com­ment about any intel­li­gence related to the weapons.

Senior law­mak­ers were noti­fied last week that U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies had detected activ­ity related to Syria’s chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, said a U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity to dis­cuss the closed-door meet­ings. All con­gres­sional com­mit­tees with an inter­est in Syria, from the intel­li­gence to the armed ser­vices com­mit­tees, are now being kept informed.

“I can’t com­ment on these reports, but I have been very con­cerned for some time now about Syria’s stock­piles of chem­i­cal weapons and its stocks of advanced con­ven­tional weapons like shoulder-launched anti-aircraft mis­siles,” said House intel­li­gence com­mit­tee Chair­man Mike Rogers, R-Mich.

“We are not doing enough to pre­pare for the col­lapse of the Assad regime, and the dan­ger­ous vac­uum it will cre­ate. Use of chem­i­cal weapons by the Assad regime would be an extremely seri­ous esca­la­tion that would demand deci­sive action from the rest of the world,” he added.

The U.S. and Jor­dan share the same con­cern about Syria’s chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons — that they could fall into the wrong hands should the regime in Syria col­lapse and lose con­trol of them.

Posted by AP News on Dec 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.