Free Republic

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called claims that he used deadly sarin gas on his people a “100 percent fabrication” and insisted the US worked “hand-in-glove” with terrorists to carry out the attacks, he said in an interview published Thursday. The Syrian strongman said he couldn’t have unleashed a poison gas strike on innocent civilians because the country has gotten rid of its chemical weapons arsenal. “Definitely, 100 percent for us. It’s fabrication. We don’t have an arsenal. We’re not going to use it,” he told Agence France-Presse. He said the attack was contrived by the US so it could launch...

U.S. officials say they are reaching the consensus view that Assad was simply acting out of desperation. The embattled Syrian leader is facing a major rebel offensive in Idlib province, led by radical Islamic groups, that his depleted and exhausted army is ill-equipped to counter by conventional means. Chemical weapons were a response of cold-blooded convenience, they believe. That Trump and his team couldn't initially decide what may have motivated the strike complicated the decision-making on how to move forward, one administration official said, but "not to the point of stopping us from doing anything.” ...Aides and friends say the...

Life comes at you fast. ThatÂ’s all I can say right now about the Obama administrationÂ’s disastrous Syrian policy that did nothing to stop bloodshed or hold any one accountable for that matter because it probably would have led to a military decision that President Obama didnÂ’t want to make. In 2014, the administration celebrated its landmark accomplishment of removing SyriaÂ’s declared chemical weapons stockpile without military strikes. Russia helped us with these negotiations, which were a total failure since chemical weapons were used against the town of Khan Shaykhun located in the Idlib Province last week. The attack killed...

Trump defends decision not to hit runway on Syrian airbase By ERIN DOOLEY Apr 8, 2017, 5:14 PM ET Following reports that two Syrian jets took off from the airfield hit by U.S. missiles Thursday night, President Trump defended his decision not to strike the runway. "The reason you don't generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix (fill in and top)!" the commander-in-chief tweeted. According to one U.S. official, initial assessments indicate that up to 20 Syrian aircraft were destroyed after the U.S. hit Syria's al Shayrat airbase with more than 50 Tomahawk cruise...

Israel believes Syria has retained caches of combat-ready chemical weapons after giving up raw materials used to produce such munitions under pressure from foreign powers, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday. Summarizing Israeli intelligence estimates that were previously not disclosed to avoid undermining the Syrians' surrender of their declared chemical arsenal, the official said they had kept some missile warheads, air-dropped bombs and rocket-propelled grenades primed with toxins like sarin. "There is, to my mind, still in the hands of Syria a significant residual capability ... that could be used in certain circumstances and could be potentially very serious,"...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Syria on Wednesday missed a deadline to hand over all the toxic materials it declared to the world's chemical weapons watchdog, putting the program several weeks behind schedule and jeopardizing a final June 30 deadline.

US President Obama today applauded a deal reached on a United Nations resolution to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles, calling it a potentially huge victory for the international community. Obama hailed the resolution and disarmament plans as a "legally binding" and "verifiable" initiative which threatens consequences if Syria did not adhere to conditions. Under a deal reached yesterday, a proposed UN resolution would require Syria to give up its chemical weapons stockpiles and allow inspectors access to all sites. The proposal does not call for force, which would require a second resolution if Syria fails to comply.

The chemical weapons watchdog has been handed "initial disclosure" of Syria's arsenal of poison gas and nerve agents. The Assad regime has given details of its toxic weapons programme to the world's chemical weapons watchdog. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the body tasked with dismantling Syria's stockpile of nerve agents, said that Syria had given an "initial declaration" outlining its programme. It will not release the details of the declaration and is now seeking to verify what has been outlined. OPCW is looking at ways to fast-track moves to secure and destroy Syria's arsenal of poison...

President Obama has formally authorized American shipments to Syria of non-lethal equipment and supplies specifically aimed at countering the threat of Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons as the world waits for them to be neutralized. In a signed order, Obama today waived prohibitions of such shipments by the Arms Export Control Act, determining that the assistance is “essential to the national security interests of the United States.” The materials — including chemical weapons-related personal protective gear and medical supplies — will be sent to “vetted” members of the Syrian opposition, international aid groups inside Syria, and any other organizations working to...

Canada’s foreign minister John Baird is calling Syria’s offer to begin providing information on its chemical arsenal 30 days after it signs an international convention banning such weapons “ridiculous and absurd.” Baird said Syrian President Bashar Assad could not be given extra time. Baird said: “This is a man who up until a week ago denied that they had any such weapons.” …

Syria’s President Bashar Assad on Thursday demanded that Israel ratify international treaties on non-proliferation of nonconventional weapons, and that the US promise not to attack his regime, as he set conditions for a negotiated resolution of the crisis over his chemical weapon. Assad said he would submit data on his country’s chemical weapons stockpile a month after signing an international convention banning the arms, adding that it was Russia, and not the US, that was making a negotiated solution possible. His comments were believed to mark Assad’s first formal acknowledgement that he has chemical weapons. Calling a month wait the...

Few people depress me these days like Michael Doran. A Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, Doran has been a leading advocate among thoughtful foreign policy analysts for a more aggressive U.S. intervention to end the conflict in Syria. Agree or disagree with that policy (I’m not sure I do, personally), it’s left him especially skeptical of the Obama administration’s push for limited strikes against Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons. When Russia seized on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s offhand suggestion that Syria could avoid U.S. strikes by giving up its chemical weapons, I reacted,...

A secretive Syrian military unit at the center of the Assad regime's chemical weapons program has been moving stocks of poison gases and munitions to as many as 50 sites to make them harder for the U.S. to track, according to American and Middle Eastern officials. The movements of chemical weapons by Syria's elite Unit 450 could complicate any U.S. bombing campaign in Syria over its alleged chemical attacks, officials said. [....] The unit is in charge of mixing and deploying chemical munitions, and it provides security at chemical sites, according to U.S. and European intelligence agencies. It is composed...

An elite Syrian unit that runs the government's chemical arms program has been scattering the weapons to dozens of sites across the country, potentially complicating US plans for air strikes, the Wall Street Journal reported. The newspaper, citing unnamed US officials and lawmakers briefed on the intelligence, said on its website on Thursday that a secretive military group known as Unit 450 had been moving the stocks around for months to help avoid detection of the weapons. US and Israeli intelligence agencies and Middle Eastern officials still believe they know the location of most of the government's chemical weapons supply,...

An Italian journalist and Belgian writer who had been held captive in Syria for the past six months were released this past Sunday. Domenico Quirico says he overheard a conversation held on Skype by his captors. The captors claimed that the recent chemical attack in Syria was orchestrated by the rebels to draw Western countries into the fight against the Assad regime.

The head of the opposition Free Syria Army, General Salim Idriss, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday that he has intelligence that the Assad regime is moving its chemical weapons out of the country. “Today we have information that the regime began to move chemical materials and chemical weapons to Lebanon and to Iraq,” General Idriss told Amanpour from inside Syria. It’s a huge claim that would fundamentally shift everything U.S. intelligence officials have in the past said they believe about the situation in Syria, CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr reports.

BEIRUT (AP) -- Syria's top rebel commander called Thursday for regime officials to be put on trial for carrying out an alleged chemical attack near Damascus that killed hundreds last month, blasting a Russian proposal for securing the country's chemical arsenal.

Britain issued a further five licences over the past decade for the export to Syria of so-called "dual use" chemicals, which can be used in the manufacture of weapons, it emerged on Wednesday. However, Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said that all of the licences predate the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in early 2011, and said he was "confident" that the exports were for legitimate commercial purposes. Mr Cable has come under fire in recent days over two licences granted in January 2012 for the export of sodium fluoride and potassium fluoride to Syria. The licences were revoked...

Finding and securing Syria's chemical weapons stockpile amid a bloody civil war will be a daunting and lengthy task that will make bringing some of the world's most contentious regimes to the negotiating table look easy, experts say. Thousands of tons of deadly weapons are spread throughout Syria, hidden in underground bunkers, secured in clandestine government facilities and constantly being moved, according an unclassified CIA report. "Nothing about this will be easy," said Gwyn Wifiled, editor of CBRNe World and an expert on weapons of mass destruction. "The inspectors will effectively become a third player in the conflict. It will...

If Saddam Hussein's Iraq is anything to go by, destroying Syria's massive chemical weapons arsenal will mean checking dozens of far-flung sites in a war zone while the government employs delaying tactics to hide the banned munitions, an expert involved in past U.N. disarmament missions said. Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons network comprises remote underground bunkers where hundreds of tons of nerve agents are stored, scud missiles and artillery shells, possibly armed with cyanide, and factories deep inside hostile territory used to produce mustard or VX gas, experts believe. "It's big. He has one of the biggest chemical weapons programs in...