NATO has accused the Syrian regime of firing Scud-style missiles at rebels, amid Russian criticism that the West’s “dangerous” stance risks bringing chaos to the country and beyond.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Friday called the Syrian army’s use of missiles against rebels an act of desperation.
“I can confirm that we have detected the launch of Scud-type missiles; we strongly regret that act,” Rasmussen said. “I consider it an act of a desperate regime approaching collapse.”
Photo: Reuters
The latest launches were detected on Thursday, a source close to NATO said, and that was corroborated by an activist in the rebel-held town of Marea in Aleppo Province.
Abu Hisham said he had been awakened to “the sound of a very loud explosion. It was raining heavily and there were many clouds, so we knew it was unlikely to be aerial bombardment.”
“The first missile fell outside Marea. Had it hit the town, it would have caused a massacre. The second, my friends told me, fell outside [the nearby town of] Tel Refaat,” he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday denounced what he called the West’s “dangerous” stance in support of Syrian rebels seeking to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Our Western colleagues have started dividing terrorists into ‘bad’ and ‘acceptable.’ That is very dangerous,” he said in an interview with the English-language Russia Today channel.
Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s position that the Syrian people should be allowed to decide their own destiny without outside agencies seeking to help oust the regime.
“We are not in the business of regime change,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow, one of the last supporters of the al-Assad regime, wanted to avoid “chaos” in Syria, calling for political talks between all parties to take the war-torn country toward a democratic regime.
“We are interested in this because this is all very close to our borders. We really would not like to see any potential changes in Syria to lead to the chaos we are witnessing in other countries of the region,” Putin said after an EU-Russia summit in Brussels.
For the second time in two days, Putin denied propping up al-Assad’s regime and appeared to acknowledge the possibility of change, saying: “We do not advocate the government of Syria.”
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Sri Lanka’s fragile economic recovery could be hampered by threatened trade union strikes over reduced benefits for government employees in this year’s budget, the IMF said yesterday. Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s maiden budget raised public sector salaries, but also made deep cuts to longstanding perks in a continuing effort to repair the island nation’s tattered finances. Sri Lanka’s main doctors’ union is considering a strike from today to protest against cuts to their allowances, while teachers are also considering stoppages. IMF senior mission chief for Sri Lanka Peter Breuer said the budget was the “last big push” for the country’s austerity
RSS