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Kaieteur News
Tuesday December 04, 2012
Obama warns Syria’s Assad not to use chemical weapons (NBC News) President Barack Obama warned Syrian President Bashar Assad yesterday that the use of chemical weapons by the regime would be “totally unacceptable.” “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,” he added. U.S. officials told NBC News that the Syrian regime had ordered Syria’s military chemical corps to “be prepared.” The officials stressed the directive was not an order to use chemical weapons and did not come from Assad directly, but that order and a considerable increase in activity around Syria’s chemical weapons sites have raised serious concerns. Syrian state television reported that the Syrian Foreign Ministry denied the
country had any plans to use chemical weapons, no matter the circumstances. The U.S. officials say the fear is that Syrians are at least preparing to mix the precursor chemicals for sarin nerve gas that could be used in artillery shells – but acknowledged it’s not clear that process has begun. Once the precursors are mixed, the sarin produced has a relatively short shelf life. In artillery shells, the precursors are packed separately inside the shells and “mixed” immediately before or shortly after the shells are fired. Despite O b a m a ’s warning that if Syria uses chemical weapons, “there will be consequences,” U.S. military forces have not been put on alert or given warning orders to prepare for any possible military action against Syria. According to a senior U.S. official, there are “plenty of assets in the region which could respond quickly.” Earlier, the State
Department said the “use or proliferation of chemical weapons” in Syria is a red line for the United States and would result in the administration’s taking “necessary steps or actions.” “We are concerned about any move that might signal that they are somehow ready to use those chemical weapons on their own people,” spokesman Mark Toner said yesterday, adding that the U.S. is concerned that Assad’s increasingly beleaguered regime might seek to up the ante in the 20month-old uprising. When asked if the chemical weapon stockpiles are secure, To n e r s a i d t h e U . S . i s monitoring them, but “it is hard to say, in Syria today, that any stockpile of weapons is secure.” The U.S. is talking to the rebels fighting against the Assad regime about how they should secure chemical weapons that may come into their possession, a senior State Department official said.
U.S. President Barack Obama A senior U.S. defense official said yesterday that U.S. and allied intelligence have detected Syrian movement of chemical weapons components in recent days. White House press secretary Jay Carney said “the world is watching” Assad and said he’ll be held accountable for his actions. Carney declined to say what U.S. contingency plans involved.
Chavez will travel to Brazil for summit - ambassador (Reuters) - Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez will travel to Brazil for a regional summit at the end of this week despite cancer-related medical treatment in Cuba, Brazil’s ambassador said yesterday. If confirmed, the 58-yearold Chavez’s presence at the Mercosur trade bloc meeting would indicate his latest health scare is not as bad as some are speculating. Venezuelan officials would not immediately confirm the ambassador ’s statement. Chavez was in Cuba yesterday and it was unknown if he would return home first if he should decide to go on to Brazil. Having won re-election in October for a new six-year term, Chavez has made scant appearances since then and not been seen in public since November 15. Last week, he left for Cuba, saying in a letter he was to receive “hyperbaric oxygenation” - a treatment used to alleviate bone decay caused by radiation therapy. The president has undergone three cancer operations in Cuba since mid-2011.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez So while officials are playing his latest treatment down as a secondary followup to successful removal of two cancerous tumours he has had in the pelvic area, media is awash with rumours that his condition could be much graver.“His presence is confirmed, that’s what I understand,” Brazil’s ambassador in Venezuela, Jose Antonio Marcondes de Carvalho, told Reuters when asked if Chavez would be at the Mercosur meeting. Chavez’s unusual silence and invisibility has extended to his normally E posted no new messages since November 1.