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Chemical weapons in Syria, which Russia and the United States won the showdown?

Published on: Saturday, September 14, 2013 //
John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov have reached an agreement on the dismantling of Syrian chemical weapons. After three days of negotiations, which party has the more concessions? 











John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov have reached an agreement on the Syrian chemical weapons. But which of them has the most steps back?

After three days of talks in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov have reached an agreement for the dismantling of the Syrian chemical arsenal . 

Who won the showdown?

Diplomacy outweighs the military option. But in this showdown turned into negotiations, Russia seems to get away cheaply. The "Russian proposal" for supervised chemical weapons regime in Damascus seemed to come from nowhere, but it was actually discussed at the G20 summit. Therefore, the great powers had paved the way for the negotiations, opposing the need to pose a military threat to Damascus . But after two days of talks in Geneva, Washington said Friday that the United States would not insist on that point. Sign of a willingness to find common ground, or the natural reluctance of President Obama to intervene in the conflict. 
Vladimir Putin strongly opposed, since the end of August to punitive strikes against Damascus with this agreement, Russia is able to both prevent these air strikes and mean, once again, its political weight on the scene international. 

-What is it strikes?

The agreement signed between John Kerry and Lavrov he really evokes the Chapter VII of the Charter of the Security Council of the UN , which allows an intervention? 
Alongside the agreement, the Security Council of the UN to adopt a resolution to strengthen the plan OPCW says Le Monde . The role of the Security Council will be primarily to monitor the implementation of the plan. And it is only in case of non-compliance that "the Security Council should impose measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter," says the agreement. For Kerry, Chapter VII is referred to Lavrov threats are discussed in conditional . 
The question is whether Russia will be in favor of measures that the Security Council may wish to take, if Syria does not respect its commitments. Nothing is less certain, given the systematic veto Moscow on these issues. 



Egypt soldiers killed in Sinai

Published on: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 //
Islamist militants have carried out a fresh attack Wednesday against the Egyptian army in the unstable Sinai Peninsula where six soldiers were killed in the explosion of two car bombs in full military operation against radical groups.
"Elements Islamist terrorists carried out a cowardly attack this morning with two cars packed with large quantities of explosives, which killed six soldiers and wounded 17 people," including seven civilians, said a military spokesman in a statement.
According to officials, a powerful explosion targeted the headquarters of the intelligence services of the army in Rafah, Gaza border town, followed a few minutes later by an attack against a military road checkpoint nearby.
Witnesses said the powerful blast shattered the windows of buildings in the Imam Ali area in Rafah. The military intelligence headquarters is located in a highly secure and surrounded by dams traffic control area.
The Rafah crossing point with the Gaza Strip was closed after the attack and all roads to and from the headquarters were closed while soldiers searched the area in search of suspects.
Since the dismissal of the army of Islamist elected President Mohamed Morsi on July 3, and the extremely bloody crackdown on protests demanding his return, the murderous Islamic radicals to the police attacks have increased in the Sinai (is ).
The army retaliated by throwing a major offensive there more than a week, bombing dens jihadists it considers "terrorists" almost daily.
Radical Islamist groups, some of whom have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, have established their rear bases in this region mainly populated by Bedouins in conflictual relations with the central government and also theater multiple traffic along the Israeli border.
There are six days in Cairo, a suicide car bomb targeted but left unscathed the Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, considered one of the main architects of the crackdown that has, from the August 14, at least a thousand deaths, pro-Morsi demonstrators for the vast majority.
The attack was claimed by a jihadist group in Sinai who pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Beit Maqdess to avenge the death of Islamist demonstrators.
The group has threatened to launch new attacks on police, the interior minister, but General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Chief of Staff of the Army and real strong man power .
The military, who deposed and arrested Mr. Morsi, the only head of state ever elected democratically in Egypt have set up a transitional government responsible for organizing legislative and presidential elections in early 2014.
But since the dispersion in the blood of two giant rallies pro-Morsi on 14 August in Cairo, the army and the police are engaged in a campaign of repression without thank you supporters of Morsi, especially members of his brotherhood the Muslim Brotherhood.
The most active Muslim Brotherhood activists were decimated and the leaders of the Brotherhood were arrested and charged in the courts of "murder" or "incitement to murder".
Even if the army and the new government seem supported by a large majority of the population, which showed millions of end June to demand the departure of Mr. Morsi, experts fear a bombing campaign against the radical groups "stroke military state. "
Military operations have redoubled in intensity after a wave of violence against the security forces especially in the Sinai, where August 19, 25 policemen were killed in the deadliest attack in years.
In two months, the military has assured killing a hundred insurgents in the Sinai and said that they had killed at least 58 police officers, 23 soldiers and 17 civilians.

France will submit a draft resolution binding

Published on: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 //
The French draft UN resolution is binding and provides the "control and dismantling" of Syrian chemical weapons, said Tuesday the head of French diplomacy, Laurent Fabius.

"France will propose to its partners today the Security Council a draft resolution under Chapter 7," authorizing the use of force in case of non-compliance, told the press the Minister.
It aims to "demand that the plan to have any immediate light on its chemical weapons program, he placed under international control and be dismantled," he said.
Fabius said that the resolution would also aim to "establish a comprehensive inspection and control device of its obligations under the aegis of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)."
"It is the acceptance of the specific conditions that we deem credible intentions which have been expressed," said the head of French diplomacy.
Russia, an ally of the regime in Damascus, on Monday proposed to place the Syrian chemical weapons under international control in order to destroy it, the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem "welcomed".
For its part, the Syrian opposition has denounced a "political maneuver" to avoid western strikes, and again demanded a "response" against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
The French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said for his part that "international pressure had worked.""If there had been no such determination, Russia would not move," he said.
"This is an opening. It must be seized and that the regime of Bashar al-Assad will meet formally, it firmly engages and it is implemented quickly," he said.
He also confirmed that the Russian proposal would be "a binding UN resolution."
"We absolutely do not release the pressure. Our entire device is ready", yet the minister said.
Bashar al-Assad is accused by Western countries of having perpetrated the August 21 massacre near Damascus with chemical weapons of several hundred people, and that Washington intended to punish Paris with military strikes.

Afghanistan: Taliban kill four secret service agents

Published on: Sunday, September 8, 2013 //

Maidan Shar (Afghanistan) (AFP) - Four intelligence agents were killed and dozens of civilians wounded in Afghanistan Sunday in an attack by Taliban an Afghan intelligence office (NDS), the day after a strike NATO air that could have killed a dozen civilians.
Sunday afternoon, a group of six armed rebels managed to enter the courtyard of the offices of the Afghan secret service in Maidan Shar, the capital of Wardak province (southwest of Kabul), after exploding a car bomb outside the gate of the building, told AFP the spokesman of local government, Attaullah Khogyani.
"Five attackers and four agents of NDS were killed in the ensuing clashes," for nearly an hour, the sixth who died in the explosion of the car bomb, the official added.
On site, an AFP photographer saw the bodies of five insurgents killed by Afghan forces and a crater several meters in diameter caused by the explosion of a car bomb.
The spokesman said that "thirty civilians" were injured in the attack. But an official from a local hospital, Dr. Ghulam Farooq Wardak, reported a much higher figure: a "153" people, including 23 women and two children were hospitalized, he said, citing 12 people in critical condition.
The attack, claimed by the Taliban, came a day after an air strike by the NATO International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) against a vehicle in which there were insurgents, but also, according to local officials, civilians.
"A civilian vehicle (...) was hit by a shot of drone international forces" in Kunar province, along the Pakistani border, an area where Islamist insurgents have a strong presence, told AFP the head of the local police, Abdul Habib Sayedkhil.
Ten civilians were killed, he said, adding that the attack had also killed "four armed insurgents." These would be installed before the air strike in the vehicle, a pick-up where there were civilians in circumstances that remain to be determined.
The governor of the province, Shujaul Jalala Mulk, expressed a significantly higher balance, evoking death "at least twelve civilians."
"We can confirm that coalition forces conducted a precision strike yesterday (Saturday) in the province of Kunar," responded the international NATO force in Afghanistan (ISAF) said in a statement.
This attack "caused the death of ten members of the enemy forces," said the coalition. "At this stage we have no information on the existence of civilian casualties."
Civilian casualties caused by NATO airstrikes have been a recurring anger of Afghan President Hamid Karzai with regard to the international force. In early February, the Afghan president had forbidden its armed forces to seek air support of NATO, after ten women and children were killed, also in Kunar province.
These shootings and bombings are particularly unpopular with the Afghan population.
"It was a brutal attack," he told AFP Ziarat Gul, a resident of the area where the strikes took place. "Even if the insurgents were in the vehicle, they would not have attacked (...). Civilian Life is more precious and important than those of the insurgents."
Despite nearly twelve years of war, the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001, have not been put out of action, and pursue a violent guerrilla war against the Afghan government and international forces.
The attack Sunday against the Afghan secret service shows that the path to peace will be long and difficult, despite the release Saturday by neighboring Pakistan seven Afghan Taliban leaders, a move intended to "assist the Afghan national reconciliation process," in Islamabad.

Syria: a number of countries prepared to take military action

Published on: //


U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday, September 2013 7 to Paris that several countries are prepared to take part in military action against the Syrian regime. He also praised the "very powerful" statement of the European Union, which has called for a "clear and strong response" against Syria accused of chemical attack.

Russia detects two missiles in the Mediterranean: an Israeli-American exercise

Published on: Tuesday, September 3, 2013 //

Russia has detected Tuesday morning the launch of two ballistic missiles in the Mediterranean, which fell in the sea, shots made under an Israeli-American exercise, according to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.


"The launch, which took place in Moscow 10:16 (6:16 GMT), was detected by radar stations in Armavir" (southern Russia), said the Ministry of Defence said in a statement quoted by Russian news agencies.

"The Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told Russian President Vladimir Putin, commander in chief," said the Ministry of Defence.
The rockets were launched "in the central part of the Mediterranean to the east coast," the ministry said without elaborating.
A little later, the Israeli Ministry of Defense announced that it had conducted "successfully" in the morning a missile radar as part of a US-Israeli military exercise.
"The Department of Defense and the MDA (Missile Defense Agency) U.S. launched Tuesday morning at 9:15 a missile radar type Ankor," the ministry said in a statement.
According to a Russian military-diplomatic source quoted by the Interfax agency, it could be shooting to "refine meteorological records."
"It is possible that the destroyers of the 6th Fleet of the U.S. Navy have fired blanks or lures to test the efficiency of the Syrian missile defense," said a source in Moscow quoted by the Interfax news agency.
These shots could be designed to "intimidate the Syrian people and disrupt the international community", the source said.
"There were in fact two launches, they fell into the sea", for his part, said a Syrian official source quoted by the Russian government agency Ria Novosti.
Russia also announced Tuesday it had sent another warship to the Mediterranean.
"The landing ship Novocherkassk left Tuesday morning Novorossiysk port (Black Sea) and took the direction of the Bosphorus," said an official in the Russian General Staff.
A Russian military-diplomatic source announced the day before that Russia had sent a ship reconnaissance and electronic surveillance to the Syrian coast in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Staff of the Russian armed forces said last week that a group of ships already in the Mediterranean, conducting uninterrupted observations and analyzes of military activities around Syria.
Russia maintains a constant presence in the eastern Mediterranean, where several of its military vessels relay since the beginning of the Syrian crisis two and a half years ago.
Mainstay of the regime in Damascus which it delivers weapons, Russia since the Soviet period operates a military supply base in the port of Tartus, 220 km northwest of Damascus.
Following an attack with chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21, given by the Americans to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, President Barack Obama has asked Congress to approve the principle of strikes Air Syria.Russia categorically opposes.
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