UN Security Council Reaches Agreement on Syrian Weapons
The five members of the U.N. Security Council “reached an agreement on Thursday over the wording of a ‘binding and enforceable’ resolution to eliminate Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons,” the Guardian reports.
In a nod to Russia’s position, the agreement doesn’t authorize the use of force “if Syria does not comply – the sticking point that had prevented diplomatic progress on the conflict that has lasted more than two years and killed more than 100,000 people.”
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/26/syria-chemical-weapons-un-resolution>
The Washington Post quotes Secretary of State John Kerry as saying that “we did reach agreement with respect to the resolution; we’re now doing final work putting that language together.” Kerry “expressed hope that ‘this resolution can now give life hopefully to the removal and destruction of chemical weapons in Syria’.”
His Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, said Thursday that he thought the Russians had “reached an understanding with the U.S.”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/uns-five-big-powers-agree-on-syrian-resolution-wording/2013/09/26/8546476c-26fc-11e3-b3e9-d97fb087acd6_story.html>
Humanitarian Aid Volunteers Caught in Crossfire
“Moadamiyeh is one of a number of towns and villages in Syria in which people are, in effect, prisoners. There is no moral difference between their jailers. In some places it is government forces who are putting a rebel-held area under siege; in others, the rebels are tightening the noose on a government-held area,” the Guardian reports from Damascus.
He talks to the head of the disaster response unit in the Damascus branch of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, or Sarc, about the increasing dangers faced by local volunteers trying to get aid into towns like Moadamiyeh.
“My colleague in the passenger seat was on the phone to the rebel commander when a bullet came from the front, hit the dashboard and by pure chance decided to go left, not right,” the man tells him. “He was killed instantly. The rebels later apologized but I don’t know if that counts for much.”
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/26/syria-crisis-sarc-volunteers>
Arabs and Kurds Continue to Clash
On yet another Syrian battlefield, Kurds are waging war against Islamic extremists. This fight is focused on the key crossing of Ras al-Ayn, on the Turkey-Syria border.
“For much of last week, according to local residents and opposition sources, fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS, and other extremist groups – who control areas to the west and south of Ras al-Ayn – tried to tighten their stranglehold over the town by taking over a village just a few miles to its east,” TIME magazine reports.
“For the al-Qaida linked rebels, Ras al-Ayn is a major strategic prize. ‘Nusra wants to establish an Islamic emirate in [parts of Syria],’ says Salih Muslim, the head of the Syria-based Democratic Union Party (PYD), but to do so ‘they need a connection with Turkey, roads, a way to bring in people and supplies from the outside world into Syria.’ One of the best ways, he says, ‘is through the border in Ras al-Ayn.’”
<http://world.time.com/2013/09/26/syrias-many-battlefields-islamist-rebels-wage-war-against-the-kurds/#ixzz2g55921rn>
Escalating Calls for a War Crimes Tribunal
The AP reports that a group of international war-crimes experts has called for “the creation of a war-crimes court in Damascus to try top-ranking Syrian politicians and soldiers when the country’s civil war ends. Professor Michael Scharf of Case Western Reserve University, acting as spokesman, told the Associated Press Friday that a draft for such a court has been quietly under development for nearly two years by many of the key figures from other national and international war crimes tribunals, as well as Syrian jurists, politicians and leaders.”
<http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Sep-27/232789-push-for-syrian-war-crimes-court.ashx?#axzz2g5hvYHDi>