13/08/2013 15:53
U.S. eyeing Syrian opposition alliances, chemical weapons moves
The United States is gaining more insight into Syria's moderate opposition but must watch carefully to determine when occasional collaboration with Islamist radicals might turn into real alliances, the top U.S. military officer said on Monday, according to Reuters.
The comments by General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, came at the start of a trip to close U.S. allies Israel and Jordan likely to be dominated by discussions about Syria's conflict and broader regional unrest.
Syria's Western-backed rebels have been clamoring for the United States to make good on promises to provide weapons. But the Obama administration has been slow to act because of concerns that American arms could find their way to al Qaeda-linked fighters.
Dempsey, who did not discuss in any detail the issue of weapons in his remarks to a small of group of reporters in Tel Aviv, said some amount of collaboration between moderate and extremist rebels was "unsurprising" given their shared goal to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
"The real challenge for the intel community, frankly, is to understand when they're collaborating just for a particular issue at a particular time and when they may actually be allied with each other," he said.
"And to this point, I think, we're not exactly certain where that fine line of distinction might reside."
Dempsey said perhaps the single greatest point of collaboration between the United States, Israel and Jordan on Syria centered on the threat from Assad's chemical weapons as the civil war rages.
Dempsey renewed U.S. assertions that Assad's forces were sometimes moving the chemical weapons.
"We know for a fact that it is moving from time to time," Dempsey told reporters, adding the U.S. believed Assad's forces were moving the weapons to keep them secure.
Asked whether there was any recent movement, Dempsey said: "It's a frequent occurrence, and I think that's probably a reflection of the fact that the regime is concerned that if it were to place it in one place on a permanent basis, it could be vulnerable."