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<p>The United States and Russia abandoned diplomatic niceties Wednesday in a fractious public debate over Syria, blaming each other for spoiling the country’s cease-fire and offering only temporary patches to stem the bloodshed. Secretary of State John Kerry called for all warplanes to halt flights over aid routes, while Russia’s chief diplomat spoke of a possible three-day pause in fighting.</p>

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Syria’s chemical arms handover will only work if the US and its allies renounce the use of force against Damascus. Follow RT's Live Updates "Of course, all of this will only mean anything if the United States and other nations supporting it tell us that they're giving up their plan to use force against Syria. You can’t really ask Syria, or any other country, to disarm unilaterally while military action against it is being contemplated," President Putin said on Tuesday. President Putin said that the matter of bringing Syria’s chemical weapons under international control...

The frantic spin of the millisecond is that the White House is taking a ‘hard look’ at the Russian proposal for Bashar Assad to place Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under UN control, thus at least postponing another US war in the Middle East. Oh, the joys of the geopolitical chessboard; Russia throwing a lifeline to save US President Barack Obama from his self-spun ‘red line’. True diplomats are supposed to prevent wars – not pose as warmongers. American exceptionalism is of course exempted. So just as Secretary of State John Kerry had the pedal on the metal selling yet another...

Many thousands of people from the social media and civil society groups have worked tirelessly and selflessly for the last months fighting with their pens and keyboards against an upcoming peak of violence fuelled once again by the neo-conservative corporate elitist lobbies which pull Washington's strings and those of their poodles in NATO. Can we call this a victory? Let us examine this issue from various angles and let us not fall into the temptation to pat each other on the back and ignore the Syrian people themselves. The informed society and social networking To begin with, the context of...

Syria’s main opposition group denounced as a “political maneuver” a Russian plan to head off threatened punitive US air strikes on Syria by destroying the regime’s chemical weapons. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested on Monday that Damascus hand its chemical arsenal to international control and have it destroyed. “The proposal of Lavrov is a political maneuver and is part of useless procrastination that will only result in more deaths and destruction for the Syrian people,” said a statement from the opposition Syrian National Coalition late Monday. The Coalition added that “the violation of international law requires an appropriate international...

DAMASCUS, Sept 10 — A Syrian caricature shows US President Barack Obama smile and pluck the petals of a daisy, as he wonders, “Should I bomb? Or shouldn't I bomb?” While delays a strike against President Bashar al-Assad's regime that was thought imminent a week ago, Syrians on both sides of their civil war are resorting to black humour, sharing jokes and cartoons via mobile phone and the Internet. After saying he had the authority to act on his own to strike the Syrian regime for its deadly use of chemical weapons near Damascus on August 21, Obama then referred...

PARIS — More than two-thirds of French people are against the country taking part in international military action in Syria, according to a newspaper poll published Saturday. The survey for French daily Le Figaro showed the country's opposition to military action against the Damascus regime has increased markedly since the end of August. Asked whether they would be in favor of French participation — which President Francois Hollande strongly supports — 68 percent of respondents said no. That was an increase of nine percentage points on a survey published on Aug. 29. The survey also showed that 64 percent oppose...

Retired U.S. Navy Admiral James "Ace" Lyons believes President Barack Obama has weakened America’s military at a crucial time in world history. "He's unilaterally disarming our military capability and in the time in the chaos throughout the world," Lyons told former Congressman Allen West, guest host of "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV. "Certainly [with] the tragedies that are going on in the Middle East and the threats we're receiving both from Russia and China, this is not the time to be unilateral disarming our military."

A civilian campaign to protect Syrian installations with human shields is being held in Damascus in anticipation of looming US attacks. The campaign “Over our dead bodies,” which was started last week on Facebook by Ogarite Dandache, a Lebanese reporter who has been covering the Syrian crisis, encourages people to form human shields around Syrian facilities that are potential US strike targets. Dandache told the Global Times Wednesday that the idea of the campaign was drawn from a similar one conducted during the Iraq War. She insisted that it be a “personal endeavor unattached to any financial or political sides.”...

As darkness fell in Damascus, the exchange of bombardments and mortar shells between government forces and rebels stepped up on the outskirts of the capital. Inside the Old City, residents and visitors wandered through the historic heart of Damascus, packed with monuments, religious sites and craft shops. People smoking hookahs could be seen at every restaurant and coffee shop, despite the constant thundering several kilometers away. At one restaurant in a Christian neighborhood of the Old City, joyful cheers and music played as a wedding party drowned out the sounds of artillery. The party took place only one day after...

VIENNA (AP) — Russia is warning that a U.S. strike on Syria's atomic facilities might result in a nuclear catastrophe and is urging the U.N. to present a risk analysis of such a scenario. The warning comes from Russia's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Alexander Lukashevich. He said in a statement Wednesday that a strike on a miniature reactor near Damascus or other nuclear installations could contaminate the region with radioactivity, adding: "The consequences could be catastrophic." IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor told the AP in an email Thursday that her agency is ready to "consider the questions raised" by Lukashevich if it...

Probes from Khan al-Assal show chemicals used in the March 19 attack did not belong to standard Syrian army ammunition, and that the shell carrying the substance was similar to those made by a rebel fighter group, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated. RT's LIVE UPDATES on Syrian 'chemical weapons' crisis A statement released by the ministry on Wednesday particularly drew attention to the “massive stove-piping of various information aimed at placing the responsibility for the alleged chemical weapons use in Syria on Damascus, even though the results of the UN investigation have not yet been revealed.” By such means “the...

WASHINGTON – You can’t safely bomb a chemical weapon storehouse into oblivion, experts say. That’s why they say the United States is probably targeting something other than Syria’s nerve agents. Now, however, there is concern that bombing other sites could accidentally release dangerous chemical weapons that the U.S. military did not know were there because they’ve lost track of some of the suspected nerve agents. Bombing stockpiles of chemical weapons — purposely or accidentally — will likely kill nearby civilians in an accidental nerve agent release, create a long-lasting environmental catastrophe or both, experts said. That’s because under ideal conditions...

“We are currently witnessing the collapse of state in Libya, and the country is getting closer to local wars for oil revenues,” said the Swiss-based group Petromatrix. The country’s oil ministry said production has slumped to an average of 300,000 barrels per day (b/d) in August, down by more than four-fifths from its peak after the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime two years ago. “Militia groups are behaving like terrorists, using control over oil as political leverage to extract concessions,” said Dr Elizabeth Stephens, head of political risk at insurers Jardine Lloyd Thompson. Port closures and strikes have compounded the...

The U.S. now appears like it will act unilaterally to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for reportedly using chemical weapons on its own population — even though President Barack Obama said last year that taking unilateral action in Syria would be a “mistake.” Obama was elected president in 2008 promising a new era of multilateralism and cooperation with the world. Just last year he said “unilateral” action in Syria would be “a mistake.” “For us to take military action unilaterally, as some have suggested, or to think that somehow that there is some simple solution, I think is a...

WASHINGTON, August 29 (RIA Novosti) – An urgent meeting of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – reportedly called by Russia – ended in less than an hour on Thursday without any indication of progress or agreement on the crisis in Syria following last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack, US media reported. It was the second time in two days that the five permanent Security Council members – the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China – came out of a meeting with no apparent progress. Russia, which on Wednesday blocked a British resolution seeking the...

Syria isn’t our war. It doesn’t involve us, it isn’t our business, we don’t want any part of it. Obama and the boys are about to start World War III and the American people are sitting here wondering what in the hell is going on.They show us some video of dead kids on the evening news and all of a sudden the White House spokesman is talking about how we must respond. We? When did we sign off on that? John Kerry talks in his big-boy voice and various murmurings escape from 10 Downing Street and now we’re counting destroyers...

The price of oil closed above $109 a barrel, its highest level in a year and a half, as the U.S. edged closer to intervening in Syria's civil war. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday that American forces were ready to act on any order by President Barack Obama to strike Syria in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in the conflict. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that it was "undeniable" that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. The U.S. Navy has four destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea within range of targets inside Syria. The...

BEIJING — An attack on Syria would be dangerous and irresponsible, and the world should remember the Iraq war was started by U.S. allegations of weapons of mass destruction which turned out to be false, China's official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday. The United States has served Syrian President Bashar al-Assad notice that it believes he was responsible for chemical weapons being used against civilians last week. Military chiefs from the United States and its European and Middle Eastern allies have met in Jordan for what could be a council of war, should they decide to punish Assad, who...

A military strike without preparing an international coalition would be ineffective and would turn the world against the United States, Ret. U.S.S. Cole Cmdr. Kirk Lippold said Tuesday. "Right now we are not ready. And just launching Tomahawks is going to be ineffective, and do nothing but turn the world against us," Lippold said on "Fox & Friends." "We need that broader consensus throughout the world to take unilateral military action against them," Lippold said. "I am for action. But appropriate action at the appropriate time." President Barack Obama is contemplating a missile strike of limited scope and duration in...