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أبرز عناوين الصحف البريطانية والأمريكية 

عن الشأن السوري
ليوم11-10-2012

((المعرفة تنير موقفا))

الصحف البريطانية 11/10/2012

1)guardian

1) Four factors pushing Turkey and Syria to war
أربعة عوامل تدفع للحرب بين سوريا وتركيا

Neither Turkey nor Syria want a war, but both sides don't want to appear to back down and there are four factors pushing them towards a conflict, according to the Atlantic's Robert Wright.

Here's a summary of his four points

1.       Turkey could decide that war is preferable to the alternatives of an influx of more refugees and Kurds using the ongoing civil war to carve out an autonomous region in Syria .

2.       A Turkish-Syrian war could draw the US into the conflict making such a move more attractive to some influential backers of American intervention.

3.       Syria will continue attacking the Turkish border to stop the supply of weapons to rebels. "The Syrian regime is fighting for its life, and along the Turkish-Syrian border lies the lifeline of its enemy" Wright says.

4.       In a way Turkey is already at war with the Syrian regime by supplying weapons to rebels.

2) Syria accuses Turkey of 'air piracy'
سوريا تتهم تركيا بالقرصنة الجوية

The Turkish daily Hurriyet says no weapons were found on the grounded Syrian plane, but an inspection found that communication equipment used for military purposes was discovered.

  Russia insists no military equipment was on board. RIA Novosti said 17 Russians were among the 30 passenger on the board the diverted Moscow to Damascus flight.

 Meanwhile, Syria 's transport minister has accused Turkey of "air piracy" over the incident, Lebanon 's al-Manar Television reported.

 The channel quoted minister Mahoumd Said as saying that grounding the flight represented "air piracy which contradicts civil aviation treaties", Reuters reports.

3) Iraq urges Turkey not to draw in Nato
العراق تدعو تركيا الى عدم استدعاء حلف الناتو للتدخل

Iraq 's prime minster, Nouri al-Maliki, has warned Turkey not to draw Nato into the Syrian conflict.

 Speaking on a visit to Moscow he said:

  Turkey is being presumptuous, you could say, as if it were taking responsibility for solving the Syrian conflict instead of the Syrian people and wants to impose its own solution. For this reason the international community needs to stop Turkey from intervening.

·         4)

Arms supplies to Syrian rebels dry up amid rivalries and divisions

نقص الامدادات والمساعدات الى سوريا بسبب الإنقسمات والمنافسات

A Syrian rebel carries a sand bag in the Saif al-Dawla district during clashes with government forces in the northern city of Aleppo . Photograph: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images

In the battle for northern Syria the most important front is far from Aleppo . It is across the border in the southern Turkish town of Antakya . Here rebels, who now move around with increasing ease, are engaged in daily bids for patronage with those who keep the insurgency running.

Over the past year, and especially since May, when weapons started to arrive, Bashar al-Assad's enemies have met their benefactors in Antakya 's backstreets, coffee shops and hotel lobbies and made a case as to why they should receive help.

The rivalries of Arab and Gulf politics, divisions between the west and Russia , fear of Syria 's bloody crisis spreading beyond the country's borders to drag in Iran or Lebanon all make supplying arms to the rebels a sensitive and murky issue.

Now, it seems, the supply is drying up. On Aleppo 's frontlines, there is still no sign of the heavy weapons for which the rebels have pleaded. Ammunition is running low. "They are giving us enough to keep this fight going, but not enough to win it," complained Abu Furat, a commander. "I'm sure that's not going to change until after the American elections. I'm not sure everyone can survive until then."

The men with the money and influence in Antakya are envoys sent by the Sunni world's political elite or business leaders. One name comes up more than any other – a Lebanese MP named Okab Sakr.

"Every time Okab is in town the weapons start to move across the border," said a rebel colonel from the Jebel al-Zawiya region, who calls himself Abu Wael. "The problem is he is very particular about where those weapons go."

Sakr is a member of the Future movement of the Lebanese opposition leader, Saad Hariri. According to colleagues in Beirut he has been given the role of gun runner-in-chief. Sakr has become a polarising figure among Syria 's fragmented opposition; those he supplies see him as a saviour; those who miss out hold him responsible for the faltering rebel cause.

Dissatisfaction with Sakr's role goes further. The US, always jittery about backing the uprising, is opposed to calls by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply rebel groups with equipment needed to combat aircraft and tanks – an issue raised by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Monday. Jordan and Turkey appear to share Washington 's concerns. Confirmation on Wednesday that the US had sent a military mission to Jordan to help build a headquarters on the border with Syria and to improve Jordan 's military capabilities underlines worries about possible spillover.

"It's about indirect intervention," said Mustafa Alani of the Saudi-financed Gulf Research Centre in Abu Dhabi . "The money is there, arms can be supplied. But the Jordanians and the Turks are hesitant. Turkey is allowing some weapons in but there are a lot of restrictions. People are waiting for a shift after the US election."

Another growing problem is a lack of co-ordination between Qatar and the Saudis – the likely subject of Wednesday's talks in Doha between the Emir and the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar. King Abdullah is said to be growing impatient with the difficulties of the Syrian crisis. According to Syrian opposition activists, the Saudis now sponsor only rebel groups which are at odds with those backed by Qatar and Turkey , which are often linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

"The Qataris are much more proactive than the Saudis," said one well-placed Arab source. "The Saudis are not interested in democracy, they just want to be rid of Bashar. They would be happy with a Yemeni solution that gets rid of the president and leaves the regime intact."

Intelligence chiefs from Turkey , Saudi Arabia , Qatar and France reportedly met in Turkey in early September along with the CIA director general, David Petraeus. But they apparently failed to reach agreement on a co-ordinated strategy.

US officials say the opaque nature of the opposition and the creeping presence of foreign jihadis are behind their pressure on Riyadh and Doha . "They have both been given a yellow light by the Americans," said a Lebanese minister aligned to the Future movement. "The Saudis see yellow as yellow, but the Qataris have seen it as green. Their connections with and supply to the opposition have continued, perhaps escalated. The Americans are especially against handing out anti-aircraft missiles. They will not accept these things falling into the hands of jihadis. Imagine having to do a Stinger buy-back programme like Afghanistan all over again."

Now the Saudis are signalling that they are reaching the limits of what they will do in the face of US objections, concern about the resilience of the Assad regime, fears that extremists will dominate the opposition – as well as the risks of "blowback" from jihadis returning home.

The initial armed support for the rebels resulted in two substantial shipments of automatic weapons, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades, delivered in May and June from Turkey . Since then, large-scale gun-running has dried up.

"The Saudis were the most enthusiastic by far about getting weapons to the rebels," said a former Lebanese MP. "They were public about it and committed. That was until July." By the middle of that month, foreign jihadis started trickling into Syria looking to join the fray.

The rebel military council, a group of defected senior officers, is opposed to the foreigners and wary of Syria 's own Islamist groups, who have been organising and arming in the rural areas between Aleppo and Idlib.

Riyadh worries too about its home front, where the Syrian issue is kept alive by the likes of Sheikh Adnan Arour, a rabidly sectarian Salafi televangelist. Official media continue to bombard the public with images of atrocities carried out by Alawites – Assad's ruling sect. But non-establishment clerics who wanted to launch a fundraising drive to aid Syria were ordered to hold off. An official campaign raised more than $100m in a few days.

"The Saudis fear that there will be blowback from Syria like there was from Iraq and Afghanistan ," said Alani. "They don't want chaos. They want the Syrian military to take over. The whole region wants that, including the Israelis. Everyone wants an organised structure of army officers who will keep weapons under control and make sure that they are handed in."

Now the Saudis are pushing the armed Syrian opposition to form a "salvation front" with unified command and control on the ground and, crucially, an ability to collect weapons once fighting has ended – a lesson learned the hard way from Libya . The Saudis are backing brigadier-general Manaf Tlass, the most senior defector yet from the military – from a key Sunni family – as part of a drive to win over other figures from the Syrian army and security establishment. "It's no good calling for them to be held accountable for crimes," warned Alani. "They need to be told they will get support." Next week the Qataris are hosting a conference to try to unite a host of squabbling opposition groups.

But there is little optimism about prospects for any immediate improvement. "It's all a bit of a mess," said analyst Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution in Doha . "Everyone is waiting for someone else to do a better job. It can't be the Saudis or the Qataris or the Turks. It's got to be the Americans. If we are looking at Gulf support it's certainly been a big story, but that's not the reality. There's a big gap between what people think the Gulf countries have been doing and what they are actually doing. Not that many weapons have been delivered."

5) The joint UN-Arab League envoy to Syria , Lakhdar Brahimi, has arrived in Jeddah , Saudi Arabia , on the first stop of his second regional tour, AFP reports. His spokesman said Brahimi will hold wide-ranging talks on the crisis in Syria . He is expected to visit Damascus as part of the tour.
وصول الأخضر الإبراهيمي الى جدة ، وقال المتحدث الرسمي بأسمه : سيتم عقد محادثات واسعة النطاق بشأن الأزمة في سوريا

6) Britain has sent military personnel to Jordan, according to the Times after it confirmed it had sent troops to the Jordan-Syrian border to as part of a taskforce aimed at stopping the Syrian conflict spreading south. A foreign office spokesman told the Times: "We are working with international partners and countries neighbouring Syria to improve border controls to reduce the risk of weapons proliferating to third parties. We have made clear to Assad, directly and through other parties, that any use or proliferation of CBW [chemical and biological weapons] would be completely unacceptable
ارسال بريطانيا قوات عسكرية الى الأردن للانضمام إلى الفريق لمنع انتشار العنف جنوبا من سوريا وقال المتحدث باسم وزارة الخارجية : نحن نعمل مع الشركاء الدوليين والبلدان المجاورة للحد من خطر انتشار الاسلحة وان انتشار الأسلحة الكميائية والبيولوجية غير مقبول تماما

2) independent

Turkey releases Syrian plane but seizes suspected military cargo
تركيا تطلق الطائرة السورية وتستولي على شحن عسكرية مشتبه بها
3)thetimes
Russian fury at Turks for intercepting jet on the way to Syria

·         غضب روسيا من تركيا لإعتراض طائرة في طريقها الى سوريا (رحلة الطائرة كانت من موسكو الى دمشق ) ووجدوا فيها معدات عسكرية

2 of 7

The aircraft was intercepted en route from Moscow to DamascusEPA

·

3 of 7

Chief of General Staff of the Turkish armed forces looks at the Syrian borderRex

·4 of 7

A wounded Syrian man is carried to a boat to cross to TurkeyReuters

·5 of 7

Tens of thousands of refugees have crossed into TurkeyReuters

·

6 of 7

A man pushes a water tank to help a Syrian family to cross to TurkeyReuters

·

7 of 7

Syrians arrive on Turkish soilReuters

Russia today demanded an urgent explanation from Turkish authorities after Ankara detained a Syrian civilian aircraft en route from Moscow to Damascus .

The Russian Foreign Ministry complained that Turkish authorities refused to grant Russian diplomatic staff access to 17 Russians aboard during the eight hours that the flight was held up because of suspicions the aircraft was carrying military equipment

الصحف الأمريكية 

11/10/2012

1( newwoke times

Turkey Forces Syrian Jet to Land, Deepening Rift With Moscow
القوات التركية توقف طائرة سورية قادمة من موسكو .. وتعميق الخلاف بين موسكو وتركيا
2) the Washington post
Syria accuses Turkey of ‘air piracy’ after plane incident
سوريا تتهم تركيا بالقرصنة الجوية بعد حادث الطائرة
3) the wallstreet journal
Syrian Conflict Grows on Two Fronts
نمو الصراع في سوريا بين الجبهتين
(4losAngeles times
Turkey forces plane bound for Syria from Moscow to land
 تركيا تجبر طائرة متجهة إلى سوريا من موسكو على الهبوط

Turkish F-16 fighter jets intercepted a passenger plane heading from Moscow to Syria and forced it to land at an Ankara airport Wednesday, Turkish state television reported.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the official Anadolu news agency that the Syrian plane had been forced to land at Esenboga airport after reports that it was carrying cargo "not suitable according to rules of civil aviation." Davutoglu said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been briefed about the Syrian plane.

Moscow is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, and Turkish news reports said that the plane was suspected to be carrying weapons. Reached by telephone Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry said it had no additional information to immediately share about the incident.



2) 1)Despite deadly attack, few in Turkish town expect war with Syria
على الرغم من الهجوم المميت والعدد القليل م في المدينة التركية .. الا انها تتوقع حرب مع سوريا
AKCAKALE, Turkey — The mortar rounds coming from just across the border in Syria troubled Omar Timucin sufficiently that he advised his family to stay indoors for their own safety.

Not long after, a projectile scored a direct hit on his home in this usually quiet Turkish border town, killing his wife, three of his daughters and his sister-in-law.

"They were preparing dinner," a shattered Timucin said Wednesday in a mourning tent on the outskirts of Akcakale.

The attack that took away his family a week ago, and which Turkish officials called a Syrian military shelling, sparked a spate of retaliatory Turkish artillery volleys into Syria as relations between the two neighboring states seemed to teeter on the edge of outright war.

Turkish fighter jets roar overhead and media reports are filled with images of missile batteries, artillery units and troops converging on the border. Still, few people here seem to expect war. Many say Turkey was forced to respond after weeks of errant shells from the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The broader challenge facing the country now is how to handle the chaos that has inevitably spilled across the border from Syria , which is in the midst of a 19-month conflict between forces loyal to Assad and opposition fighters.

" Turkey 's toolbox is limited right now," said Soner Cagaptay with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. " Turkey cannot live with Assad. But at the same time it cannot afford to launch a full-blown war campaign against him, especially not one without U.S. support."

The United States and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies have shown little inclination to become directly embroiled in a muddled and bloody struggle that has drawn freelance Islamic militants and Al Qaeda affiliates to the fragmented anti-Assad alliance. The Syrian conflict is already evoking comparisons by some to the punishing, sectarian-driven Lebanese civil war, which lasted 15 years.

The volatile issue took on another dimension Wednesday, when Turkish F-16 fighter jets forced a Syrian passenger aircraft headed from Moscow to Damascus to land in Ankara, Turkey 's capital, amid reported suspicions that it was ferrying military equipment. Officials seized communications gear from the Syrian airliner and then allowed it to continue to the Syrian capital, with its 37 passengers and crew, according to press accounts.

Early on in the Syrian crisis, the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan adopted a forceful stance against Assad and called on the Syrian leader to step down. Turkish territory became the main resupply base for Syrian rebels, and the more than 500-mile border became an opposition logistics corridor.

But expectations that Assad would follow in the footsteps of other strongmen who succumbed expeditiously to the "Arab Spring" whirlwind proved illusory.

Meantime, multitudes of refugees continue to stream across the border, taxing Turkey 's ability to care for them.

In Turkey , critics accuse Erdogan of taking the nation down a path of conflict. That would be a far cry from the "zero problems with neighbors" policy that Ankara once viewed as its signature stance. The prime minister denies acting recklessly.

"We do not seek war," Erdogan declared last week, "but we are not far from it."

Among other things, war would not be good for business. Turkey 's stunning economic expansion in recent years is closely linked to its political and social stability.

"If Turkey was seen as a country in a full-scale war, regardless of who started the war … the image on which it has built its economic growth — a stable country in this vastly unstable region — would erode overnight," Cagaptay said.

Many analysts view Turkey as hesitant to take any dramatic steps — such as moving to create an opposition-friendly "buffer zone" inside Syrian territory — without backing from other nations.

But a buffer zone would amount to a de facto seizure of Syrian territory and would require a military intervention to keep Syrian land and air forces out. The United States has signaled it is not ready to provide the needed military clout.

The Turkish armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Necdet Ozel, visited this border region Wednesday and vowed that Turkey would respond "more strongly" to any future Syrian shelling.

Not far away, along a stretch of corn and cotton fields north of town, Timucin and his remaining family received visitors at the mourning tent to remember his late wife, Zalekha; three daughters, Zainab, 8, Aisha, 11, and Fatima, 14; and his sister-in-law, Kusum. Three other daughters were injured in the shelling and remained hospitalized.

The only child in the family who was not injured was Timucin's son, Ibrahim, 16, who was with his father at the family's auto parts shop when the shell hit. On Wednesday, the boy became teary-eyed when he tried to speak.

His father expressed the sentiment of many townsfolk who are of Arab ancestry and have relatives across the border. There may be anger at Syria 's leaders, but no animus directed at the Syrian people.

"Syrians are our brothers: There will be no war," said the grieving husband and father. "War is not a solution."

The state news agency reported that Turkish authorities were searching the cargo area of the plane late Wednesday as television aired images of a airplane on the darkened runway.

Bilal Eksi, director general of the Turkish Civil Aviation Department, told Anadolu that the Syrian plane had 37 people on board, including crew members.

Turkey has traded fire with neighboring Syria in recent days, infuriated by attacks on Turkish soil that killed villagers in border towns. Its top military commander warned earlier Wednesday that Turkey would respond forcefully to any further shelling of its territory.

3) U.S. has sent troops to Jordan-Syria border, Panetta says
يقول بانيتا : الولايات المتحدة ارسلت قوات عسكرية للحدود السورية الأردنية
The United States has sent troops to Jordan to help improve its military capabilities in case the fighting in Syria spills onto its soil, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters Wednesday in Brussels.

Panetta made the remarks at a NATO meeting of defense ministers. The revelation comes at a time of growing fears that the chaos and bloodshed in Syria for more than a year and a half could spread beyond the country across the Middle East .

Turkey has retaliated against Syria after repeated attacks on its territory, including shelling last week that killed five people. Though Turkey has said it does not want war, the two countries have continued to trade fire this week.

In Jordan , the enduring conflict has ramped up fears over the fate of Syrian chemical weapons and pushed more than 100,000 refugees into the country as winter approaches.

Defense spokesman Lt. Col. Jack Miller said in an email that the exact number of troops was “an issue we don’t want to get into,” but that the U.S. had been working closely with Jordan “on a variety of issues related to Syria for some time now,” including the refugees.

The number of refugees who have left Syria for Jordan is expected to swell to 250,000 by the end of the year, according to the United Nations. The U.S. has provided medical kits, water tanks and other humanitarian aid to help Jordan care for refugees, Miller wrote.

The allies are also eyeing the security of chemical and biological weapons stockpiled by Syria , a threat that President Obama has warned could change the tack toward the continuing conflict. If the Syrian government unleashes those weapons, Obama said, that would be a "red line" triggering U.S. military intervention.

The Wednesday statement comes as the Obama administration has been under fire from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who charged Monday that Obama had done too little to bolster the cause of rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The New York Times reported on the operation Tuesday, citing American officials familiar with the operation who said the force consisted of more than 150 planners and other specialists and was based north of Amman . An unnamed senior U.S. defense official cited the same number to the Agence France-Presse.

In a statement that appeared to anticipate questions about why the operation was revealed now, Miller wrote that the Department of Defense’s willingness to publicly discuss any deployment was based on agreements between those deployed and the host nation.

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نشرنا لهذه المقالات لا يعني أنها تعبر عن وجهة نظر المركز كلياً أو جزئياً

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من حق الزائر الكريم أن ينقل وأن ينشر كل ما يعجبه من موقعنا . معزواً إلينا ، أو غير معزو .ـ