Syrian opposition chief Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib said Tuesday he has asked the United States to extend NATO’s Patriot missile system to protect rebel-held areas in the north of the war-torn country.

“I have asked [US Secretary of State] Mr. John Kerry during our meeting to provide Patriot [missile protection] that encompasses northern Syria, and he has promised to look into the matter,” said Khatib at an Arab summit in Doha, Qatar.

“We are still awaiting a decision from NATO on this matter.”

NATO’s sole involvement in Syria’s brutal civil war to date has been to position Patriot missile batteries along the Turkish border in order to prevent any air or missile launches from the Syrian side.

“The United States has a bigger role” which it could play beyond offering humanitarian aid worth “$350 million,” said Khatib.

Hours after Moaz al-Khatib, the head of the Syrian National Coalition, called on the United States to use Patriot missiles to protect rebel-held areas in Syria, the NATO military alliance said it isn’t getting involved: “NATO has no intention to intervene militarily in Syria,” an unnamed official told the Reuters news agency.

03/26/2013

A shell fired from Syria early Monday landed in southeastern Turkey without injuring anyone, Turkish television reported.

The shell dug a deep crater in an olive grove near Akcabaglar in Kilis province, damaging some trees, according to NTV and CNN-Turk.

It was not clear whether it was fired by troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or by rebels fighting to oust his regime.

Since the shelling in early October of the Turkish border village of Akcakale killed five civilians, Ankara forces have replied in kind each time Syrian fire hits Turkey, with Damascus generally being held responsible.

To protect NATO member Turkey from possible Syrian threats, the United States, The Netherlands and Germany are to deploy batteries of ground-to-air Patriot missiles and hundreds of soldiers in the next few days along the Syrian border in southern Turkey at the request of Ankara.

01/14/2013

A short-range ballistic missile was fired again inside Syria on Wednesday following similar launches last week, a NATO official said Thursday.

“We detected the launch of an unguided, short-range ballistic missile inside Syria yesterday. This follows similar launches on 2 and 3 January,” the official said.

The official added that “all missiles were fired from inside Syria and they impacted in northern Syria. None hit Turkish territory.”

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization could not provide further details on the type of missiles but condemned their use.

“The use of such indiscriminate weapons shows utter disregard for the lives of the Syrian people. It is reckless and we condemn it,” the official said.

In December, the alliance said the use of ballistic missiles by the Syrian regime endangered Turkey, a member of the 28-nation alliance.

It decided in consequence to deploy ground-to-air Patriot missiles, but insisted the deployment “will be defensive only.”

Germany, the Netherlands and the United States are supplying the Patriot missile batteries.

01/10/2013

The Netherlands’ Patriot missile batteries on Monday began their journey to fellow NATO member Turkey where they are to defend civilians near the border from a possible Syrian attack.

Around 160 vehicles carrying the missiles and equipment for 300 Dutch support troops left the Bestkazerne military base in Vredepeel in the southeastern Netherlands on Monday morning, an AFP correspondent reported.

The convoy is headed for Eemshaven port in the north of the country from where it will sail for Turkey and is expected to arrive around January 22.

The US and Germany are also sending Patriot surface-to-air missiles to southeastern Turkey following a request from Ankara because of the threat of the deadly 21-month civil war in Syria spilling over.

The Turkish request came after repeated cross-border shelling from Syria, including an October attack that killed five civilians.

The Dutch Patriots and support troops will be tasked with defending the city of Adana, population 1.5 million, which lies around 100 kilometers from Syria.

Mission commander Lieutenant Colonel Marcel Buis told journalists that 30 Dutch troops would fly out on Tuesday to begin setting up and the remaining 270 troops would fly out on January 21.

The US began deploying its Patriots on Saturday, while the German missiles are to arrive in Turkey on January 21.

Syria’s allies Iran and Russia oppose the Patriot deployment, fearing that it could spark regional conflict also drawing in NATO.

“This is a purely defensive mission,” General Tom Middendorp, the Netherlands top military officer, told journalists.

“We do not know whether the missiles will cross the border but what we do know is that Syria has deadly offensive weapons at its disposal and has already deployed them on a grand scale,” he said.

“We want to prevent what could amount to large numbers of casualties among innocent civilians.”

Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen last month rejected Iranian accusations that the West was preparing another world war by deploying Patriots near the border with Syria.

“The mission is purely focusing on threats coming from Syrian territory, the mission does not encompass possible threats from other countries,” Middendorp said.

01/07/2013

NATO began deploying Patriot missiles in Turkey Friday to defend against threats from neighboring Syria, the US military’s European Command (EUCOM) said.

US military personnel and equipment arrived at Incirlik Air Base in southeastern Turkey to support NATO’s Patriot battery deployment at Ankara’s request, EUCOM, based in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart, said in a statement.

The United States will transport some 400 troops to Turkey in the next several days to operate two Patriot batteries supporting NATO’s mission there. Additional equipment will arrive by sea later in January.

“The deployment of six Patriot batteries, including two each from Germany and The Netherlands, is in response to Turkey’s request to NATO,” EUCOM said.

“The forces will augment Turkey’s air defense capabilities and contribute to the de-escalation of the crisis along the Alliance’s border.”

EUCOM deputy commander Charles Martoglio said the Patriot batteries would fall under NATO command “when set-up is complete and the systems are operational in the next several weeks.”

“The deployment will be defensive only and will not support a no-fly zone or any offensive operation,” EUCOM added.

The duration of the deployment will be determined by the contributing nations in coordination with Turkey and NATO, it said.

Germany, The Netherlands and the United States agreed to supply the ground-to-air missile batteries, which Turkey requested after repeated cross-border shelling from Syria, including an attack that killed five civilians.

NATO-member Turkey, a one-time Damascus ally, has turned into one of its most vocal opponents over the 21-month civil war in Syria that monitors say has killed some 60,000 people.

The deployment will continue Monday when two Dutch Patriot batteries will be transported to the port of Eemshaven from a military barracks in Vredepeel in the southeast of the country, the Dutch Defense Ministry said.

The next day, 30 Dutch and 20 German soldiers charged with preparing for the missiles’ arrival by ship, scheduled for January 22, will fly from the Dutch air base of Eindhoven to Turkey.

Another 270 Dutch troops, who will operate the missiles, will leave for Turkey on January 21, the ministry added.

The German Defense Ministry said that its Patriots would be shipped Tuesday from the port of Luebeck-Travemuende and were due to arrive at the Turkish port of Iskenderun on January 21.

The main German contingent of up to 350 soldiers will begin deploying in mid-January.

January 4, 2013

Syrian warplanes bombed the town of Azaz close to the Turkish border on Sunday, destroying at least five homes, causing hundreds of people to flee and stirring panic at a Syrian refugee camp just inside Turkey, Turkish officials said.

Most of the bombs hit the centre of Azaz, around three kilometers (two miles) from the Turkish border in an area dominated by Syrian rebels, but at least one landed 500 meters from Turkish soil, one official said.

“It is very close to the Turkish border … There was also some bombing in the centre of Azaz. Around 500 people were trying to come into Turkey,” he said.

Asked if there had been any response from the Turkish military, which has frequently scrambled fighter jets along the border and fired back in kind when stray Syrian shells hit its soil, the official said: “Not yet.”

Explosions could be heard several kilometers inside Turkish territory, unnerving people in a refugee camp in the Turkish town of Kilis where some fear they could still be a target of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

“The Assad warplanes followed the refugees … They fired rockets and people were very scared, they felt they would be massacred,” a Syrian rebel fighter told Reuters after speaking to his brother inside the camp.

Turkey is loath to be drawn into a regional conflict but frequent proximity of Syrian air raids to the border is testing its pledge to defend itself from any violation of its territory or any spillover of violence from Syria.

NATO last week accepted Turkey’s request to deploy Patriot anti-missile batteries along the border to reinforce its air defenses against possible attack from Syria. The United States, Germany and the Netherlands are to send six Patriot batteries in all.

Several Scud missiles fired at rebels by Syria have landed “fairly close” to the Turkish border, NATO’s top military commander said on Friday, explaining why Patriot batteries are being stationed in Turkey.

Turkey is a staunch supporter of the uprising against Assad and has harbored both Syrian refugees and rebels.

Sun Dec 16, 2012 11:39am EST

Syrian rebels are gaining ground and might win, Russia’s Middle East envoy said on Thursday, in the starkest such admission from a major ally of President Bashar al-Assad in 20 months of conflict.

“One must look the facts in the face,” Russia’s state-run RIA quoted Mikhail Bogdanov as saying. “Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be ruled out.”

Bogdanov, a deputy foreign minister and the Kremlin’s special envoy for Middle East affairs, said the Syrian government was “losing control of more and more territory” and Moscow was preparing to evacuate Russian citizens if necessary.

Advancing rebels now hold an almost continuous arc of territory from the east to the southeast of Damascus, despite fierce army bombardments designed to drive them back.

The head of NATO said he thought Assad’s government was nearing collapse and the new leader of Syria’s opposition told Reuters the people of Syria no longer needed international forces to protect them.

“The horrific conditions which the Syrian people endured prompted them to call on the international community for military intervention at various times,” said Mouaz al-Khatib, a preacher who heads Syria’s National Coalition.

“Now the Syrian people have nothing to lose. They handled their problems by themselves. They no longer need international forces to protect them. The international community has been in a slumber, silent and late (to react) as it saw the Syrian people bleeding and their children killed for the past 20 months,” he added in the interview on Wednesday night.

He did not specify whether by intervention he meant a no-fly zone that rebels have been demanding for month, a ground invasion - which the opposition has warned against - or arms shipments.

He said the opposition would consider any proposal from Assad to surrender power and leave the country, but would not give any assurances until it saw a firm proposal.

In the latest blow to the government, a car bomb killed at least 16 men, women and children in Qatana, a town about 25 km (15 miles) southwest of Damascus where many soldiers live, activists and state media said.

The explosion occurred in a residential area for soldiers in Qatana, which is near several army bases, said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

He put the death toll as 17, including seven children and two women. State news agency SANA said 16 people had died.

State television blamed the blast on “terrorists” - its term for rebels - and showed footage of soldiers walking by a partly collapsed building, with rubble and twisted metal on the road.

The attack follows three bombs at the Interior Ministry on Wednesday evening, in which state news agency SANA said five people were killed, including Abdullah Kayrouz, a member of parliament from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

Apart from gaining territory in the outskirts of Damascus in recent weeks, rebels have also made hit-and-run attacks or set off bombs within the capital, often targeting state security buildings or areas seen as loyal to Assad, such as Jaramana, where twin bombs killed 34 people in November.

The Pakistani Foreign Office said on Thursday security concerns had prompted it to withdraw the ambassador and all Pakistani staff from the embassy in the central suburb of East Mezzeh, a couple miles from the Interior Ministry.

BACK TO THE WALL

Insurgents launched an offensive on Damascus after a July 18 bombing that killed four of Assad’s closest aides, including his feared brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, but were later pushed back.

With his back to the wall, Assad is reported to be turning ever deadlier weapons on his adversaries.

“I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday.

U.S. NATO officials said on Wednesday the Syrian military had fired Scud-style ballistic missiles, which are powerful but not very accurate, against rebels in recent days.

Human Rights Watch said some populated areas had been hit by incendiary bombs, containing flammable materials such as napalm, thermite or white phosphorous, which can set fire to buildings or cause severe burns and respiratory damage.

The British-based Syrian Observatory said war planes were bombing rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus on Thursday and artillery was hitting Daraya and Moadamiyeh, southwestern areas near the centre where rebels have been fighting for a foothold.

At least 40,000 people have been killed in Syria’s uprising, which started in March 2011 with street protests which were met with gunfire by Assad’s security forces, and which spiraled into the most enduring and destructive of the Arab revolts.

The United States, European powers and Arab states bestowed their official blessing on Syria’s newly-formed opposition coalition on Wednesday, despite increasing signs of Western unease at the rise of militant Islamists in the rebel ranks.

Western nations at “Friends of Syria” talks in Marrakech, Morocco rallied around a new opposition National Coalition formed last month under moderate Islamist cleric Mouaz Alkhatib.

Russia, which along with China has blocked any U.N. Security Council measures against Assad, criticized Washington’s decision to grant the coalition formal recognition, saying it appeared to have abandoned any effort to reach a political solution.

Bogdanov’s remarks were the clearest sign yet that Russia is preparing for the possible defeat of Assad’s government.

“We are dealing with issues of preparations for an evacuation. We have mobilization plans and are clarifying where our citizens are located,” Bogdanov said.

Thu Dec 13, 2012 9:32am EST

08/12/12

The surface-to-air batteries which can intercept ballistic missiles are expected to be transported to Turkey by sea within four or five weeks. They will be sited in Turkish military bases that have not been ascertained yet.

 A team of NATO experts who recently visited Turkey to survey possible sites for the deployment have already submitted their report to Ankara and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

Although there are speculations that some of Patriot batteries are expected to be sited in the Erhaç and Kürecik air bases in Malatya in addition to Diyarbakır and that the remaining will be deployed in other military bases near border, it is still not clear where the Patriots will be exactly sited.

The team reportedly surveyed sites in Elazığ, Malatya, Diyarbakır, Batman, Şanlıurfa, Gaziantep, Adana, İskenderun, Mersin and Kahramanmaraş.

Turkey to receive six Patriot batteries

The United States, Germany and the Netherlands, the only three NATO nations with the most modern type of Patriots, have all agreed to send missiles to protect their ally.

 Germany and the Netherlands have each said they will send two Patriot batteries with multiple missile launchers. Parliaments of the both countries are expected to convene this week and approve Patriot deployment in Turkey.

Although it is still not certain, the US is also expected to send two Patriot systems to Turkey, increasing the number of batteries to be deployed in Turkey to six.

Each battery to be sent to Turkey reportedly has four to six missile launchers and each launcher has the capacity to launch 16 missiles. So, a total of six missile batteries will be able to launch at least 500 missiles in response to possible anti-ballistic missile attacks.

Considering that some 100 soldiers are needed to operate each battery, the number of US, Dutch and German soldiers to be deployed in Turkey is expected to be around 600.

Transportation expenses of the Patriot systems are expected to be met by supplier countries while Turkey will meet accommodation and other expenses of foreign troops that will operate the systems.  The soldiers will abide by NATO’s relevant agreements during their mission in Turkey.

08/12/12

by Reza Kahlili Email |

Hours after NATO agreed on Tuesday to send Patriot missiles to Turkey because of the crisis in Syria, Russia delivered its first shipment of Iskander missiles to Syria.

The superior Iskander can travel at hypersonic speed of over 1.3 miles per second (Mach 6-7) and has a range of over 280 miles with pinpoint accuracy of destroying targets with its 1,500-pound warhead, a nightmare for any missile defense system.

According to Mashregh, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard media outlet, Russia had warned Turkey not to escalate the situation, but with Turkey’s request for Patriot missiles, it delivered its first shipment of Iskanders to Syria.

Reporting today, Mashregh said the handover occurred when Russian naval logistic vessels docked at Tartus in Syria.

The Iskandar is a surface-to-surface missile that no missile defense system can trace or destroy, Mashregh said. Russia had earlier threatened that should America put its missile defense system in Poland, it would retaliate by placing its Iskander missiles at Kaliningrad, its Baltic Sea port.

Russia’s delivery of Iskanders to Bashar Assad’s embattled regime clearly shows that the security and stability of Syria remains Russia’s red line, Mashregh said. It is unknown how many of these missiles have been delivered but the numbers given are sufficient to destroy any Patriot missiles in Turkey, it said.

The delivery of the missile not only threatens the security of Turkey but also Israel, which would have to recalculate its strategy with its defensive and offensive capabilities.

As reported in a WND exclusive on Dec. 5, Iran’s Islamic regime also sees the toppling of the Assad regime as its red line and has 170 ballistic missiles targeting Tel Aviv in underground missile silos, some with biological warheads.

In August, a commentary in Mashregh, representing the regime’s views, warned America and Israel that further instability in Syria would spark a pre-emptive attack on Israel in which the use of weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical and even nuclear bombs – won’t be off the table. It stated that certain groups (proxies, such as Hezbollah) have been armed with WMDs and that Israel will be their target.

The Mashregh commentary charged that Israel is one of the conspirators behind the Syrian crisis in order to strategically change the geopolitics of the region and defeat one of the main players in the Islamic world’s “resistance front” (Iran, Syria and Hezbollah). It warned Israel that with the direction it has chosen, “There is a dead end, and the threat of mass killing awaits.”

The Islamic regime in Iran for its part continues to ship arms to Syria via Iraq both by air and ground while its Quds Forces help the Assad regime in killing its own people. To date, over 40,000 people, including many women and children, have died since the Syrian uprising began in March of 2011.

Reports indicate that Assad has decided to use chemical weapons on his own people as a last attempt to save his rule. Speaking in Prague on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Syria that the use of chemical weapons would be a red line, indicating that America would retaliate.

Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered the Guards and its Quds Forces to use all of their capabilities to protect Assad and has threatened war against those helping the rebels in Syria, primarily Saudi Arabia and Turkey, according to a source who had served in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit but who has since defected.

The source added that the recent Gaza conflict was a warning to America and Israel that the Islamic regime in Iran can destabilize the region further should the push in Syria continue to topple Assad. The region will witness terrorist attacks, assassinations and incitement for uprisings in countries allied with America as the situation in Syria further deteriorates, the regime has promised, according to the source.

07/12/12

From Adrian Croft, Reuters:  Russia accused NATO on Friday of moving towards involvement in the Syrian conflict, three days after the alliance decided to station Patriot missiles to protect Turkey from spillover from the violence.

The charge came from Russia’s new ambassador to NATO, and came in spite of NATO assurances that the Patriots, which will be placed near Turkey’s border with Syria, are intended purely for defensive purposes.

“This is not a threat to us, but this is an indication that NATO is moving towards engagement and that’s it,” Alexander Grushko told reporters.

“We see a threat of further involvement of NATO in the Syrian situation as a result of some provocation or some incidents on the border, if they take place,” he said.

Grushko appeared to take a tougher line than Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who said after talks with NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday that Moscow would not protest against the deployment of the Patriot missiles.  (photo: Alexander Vilf/RIA Novosti)

06/12/12

Michael Kelley

Unnamed U.S. officials told NBC News that the Syrian military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin nerve gas into aerial bombs to potentially use in the country’s civil war.

But Syria says the claims are a Western attempt to provide a pretext to send international forces into the country.

“We fear there is a conspiracy to provide a pretext for any subsequent interventions in Syria by these countries that are increasing pressure on Syria,” Assad’s deputy foreign minister Faisal Maqdad said Thursday. He also repeated the assertion that the regime would never use chemical weapons on the Syrian people.

Sarin gas, a colorless and odorless gas that can spread quickly through the air, is one of the most dangerous and toxic chemicals known to man. The Assad government has more than 500 metric tons of the precursors and usually stores them separately to prevent accidentally triggering a deadly reaction.

The U.S. claims came hours after French weekly magazine Le Point reported that NATO special forces are preparing to enter Syria to secure its chemical weapons stockpiles.

NATO has already approved Patriot missiles for Turkey’s border with Syria. And The Voice of Russia reported that there are now 17 warships off the Syrian coast following the arrival of the U.S.S. Dwight D Eisenhower — a multipurpose nuclear attack carrier that holds 70 fighter-bombers and 8,000 U.S. servicemembers — in the eastern Mediterranean.

On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the U.S. is “certainly planning to take action” if new evidence showed that Assad’s regime intended to use its stash of chemical weapons internally or cross-border.

Also on Monday there were reports that the regime had reached the point “where they can load it up on a plane and drop it,” but on Tuesday the Pentagon told NBC that there was no clear evidence that preparations had begun.

Meanwhile Syrian rebels are closing in on Damascus and activists posted a video telling residents of Damascus how to prepare for the “Zero Hour” — a major offensive in the capital to topple the Assad regime.

Yesterday Haaretz reported that Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal al-Miqdad recently traveled to Cuba, Venezuela, and Ecuador with personal letters from Assad, looking for the possibility of political asylum for him and his family.

No matter the veracity of the claim, all signs point to the end game of the 21-month conflict.

06/12/12

By By BEN HUBBARD | Associated Press

Associated Press/Narciso Contreras - In this Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2012 photo, a Free Syrian Army fighter aims his weapon during heavy clashes with government forces in Aleppo, Syria. (AP Photo/Narciso Contre

Western powers are whipping up fears of a fateful move to the use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war as a “pretext for intervention”, President Bashar al-Assad’s deputy foreign minister said on Thursday.

He spoke as Germany’s cabinet approved stationing Patriot anti-missile batteries on Turkey’s border with Syria, a step requiring deployment of NATO troops that Syria fears could permit imposition of a no-fly zone over its territory.

“Syria stresses again, for the tenth, the hundredth time, that if we had such weapons, they would not be used against its people. We would not commit suicide,” Faisal Maqdad said.

U.S. President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders have warned that using chemical weapons would cross a red line and have consequences, which they have not specified.

Assad would probably lose vital diplomatic support from Russia and Chinathat has blocked military intervention in the 20-month-old uprising that has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

A senior Russian lawmaker and ally of President Vladimir Putin said Syria’s government is incapable of doing its job properly, a sign that Moscow may already be trying to distance itself from Assad.

“We have shared and do share the opinion that the existing government in Syria should carry out its functions. But time has shown that this task is beyond its strength,” Vladimir Vasilyev, who heads President Putin’s party group in the State Duma lower house, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

Syria’s Maqdad said Western reports the Syrian military was preparing chemical weapons for use against rebel forces trying to close in on the capital Damascus were simply “theatre”.

“In fact, we fear a conspiracy … by the United States and some European states, which might have supplied such weapons to terrorist organizations in Syria, in order to claim later that Syria is the one that used these weapons,” he said on Lebanon’s Al Manar television, the voice of Hezbollah.

“We fear there is a conspiracy to provide a pretext for any subsequent interventions in Syria by these countries that are increasing pressure on Syria.”

UNCONTROLLABLE

Exactly what Syria’s army has done with suspected chemical weapons to prompt a surge of Western warnings is not clear. Reports citing Western intelligence and defense sources are vague and inconsistent.

The perceived threat may be discussed in Dublin on Thursday when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meet international Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi to try to put a U.N. peace process for Syria back on track.

The talks come ahead of a meeting of the Western-backed “Friends of Syria” group in Marrakech next week which is expected to boost support for rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Brahimi wants world powers to issue a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a transitional administration.

In addition to the possible use of chemical bombs by “an increasingly desperate” Assad, Clinton said Washington was concerned about the government losing control of such weapons to extreme Islamist armed groups among the rebel forces.

U.S. officials said Washington was considering blacklisting Jabhat al-Nusra, an influential rebel group accused by other rebels of indiscriminate tactics that has advocated an Islamic state in Syria and is suspected of ties to al Qaeda.

An explosion in front of the Damascus headquarters of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent killed at least one person on Thursday, Syrian state television said.

It blamed “terrorists from al Qaeda” — a term often employed to refer to rebel forces.

Meanwhile, activists said the army pummeled several eastern suburbs of Damascus, where the rebels are dominant, with artillery and mortar fire. The suburbs have also been cut off from the city’s water and electricity for weeks, rebels say, accusing the government of collective punishment.

COLLAPSE

Rebels say they have surrounded an air base 4 km (2-1/2 mikes) from the center of Damascus, a fresh sign the battle is closing in on the Syrian capital.

They also said they were battling soldiers on the road to Damascus International Airport, 20 km (12 miles) out of the capital where several airlines have canceled flights due to security concerns.

Maqdad, in his interview on Thursday, argued that reports of such advances were untrue: “What is sad is that foreign countries believe these repeated rumors.”

But residents inside the capital say the sound of shelling on the outskirts has become a constant backdrop and many fear the fight will soon come to Damascus.

The Western military alliance’s decision to send U.S., German and Dutch Patriot missile batteries to help defend the Turkish border would bring European and U.S. troops to Syria’s frontier for the first time in the civil war.

The actual deployment could take several weeks.

“Some countries now are now supplying Turkey with missiles for which there is no excuse. Syria is not going to attack the Turkish people,” Maqdad said.

But a veteran Turkish commentator, Cengiz Candar of the Radikal newspaper, said Ankara fears Syria’s 500 short-range ballistic missiles could fall into the wrong hands.

The government is “of the view that Syria was not expected to use them against Turkey, but that there was a risk of these weapons falling into the hands of ‘uncontrolled forces’ when the regime collapses”, he wrote.

04/12/12

By Indo Asian News Service

04/12/12

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen holds a news conference ahead a two-day NATO foreign ministers at the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, December 4, 2012.

BRUSSELS — The NATO secretary-general says the alliance will authorize Tuesday the deployment of a missile defense system to Turkey “within weeks” in response to the continuing violence in Syria and concern its government might resort to using chemical weapons. Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made the prediction as he went into a series of meetings with alliance foreign ministers, as well as partner nations and Russia.

Secretary-General Rasmussen says the NATO ministers will “demonstrate our determination to deter against any threats” to the alliance’s southeastern border. That border is the Turkish-Syrian frontier, with Syria’s more than year-long civil war raging on the other side.

Turkey asked for NATO help after Syrian government shelling near the border hit some areas inside Turkey.

The alliance is expected to deploy American Patriot missile defense batteries in southeastern Turkey, but Rasmussen said specific decisions will be left to individual countries. The Patriot system is designed to intercept incoming missiles, not to strike targets on the ground.

But Russia is concerned about any NATO missile deployment, even if the missiles are only defensive. Rasmussen says he has tried to reassure visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and will do so again when Lavrov meets with the NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday.

“This is a purely defensive measure,” he said.”We have no intention to prepare offensive operations. So the purpose of this possible deployment is to ensure effective defense and protection of Turkey.”

Secretary-General Rasmussen called Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons “a matter of great concern,” which adds to the urgency of deploying the missile defense system to Turkey. He called any use of chemical weapons “completely unacceptable,” and said it would result in “an immediate reaction.”

The NATO ministers are also expected to discuss the ongoing mission in Afghanistan. On Monday, the secretary general told visiting Afghan reporters the alliance’s commitment to Afghanistan will continue even after its combat role ends in two years. But he said the Afghan government must also fulfill its commitments to the international community to improve governance, fight corruption, protect human rights, including women’s rights, and to hold transparent and credible elections in 2014 and 2015.

Secretary-General Rasmussen said he expects the Afghan security forces to be able to take full responsibility for the country by the end of 2014 as planned, and he repeated that the NATO role will change to support and training only at that time. He said that will be a focus of the foreign ministers’ meeting, along with ways to ensure continued foreign funding for the Afghan forces.