Syria moving chemical weapons components; Makdissi defects

WASHINGTON: US and allied intelligence have detected Syrian movement of chemical weapons components in recent days, a senior US defense official said yesterday, as the Obama administration again warned the Assad regime against using them.
A senior defense official said intelligence officials have detected activity around more than one of Syria’s chemical weapons sites in the last week. The defense official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Prague for meetings with Czech officials, reiterated President Barack Obama’s declaration that Syrian action on chemical weapons was a “red line” for the United States that would prompt action.
Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi has defected from President Bashar Assad’s government and has left the country, a regional diplomatic source said yesterday.
“He defected. All I can say is that he is out of Syria,” the source, who did not want to be named, said.
Makdissi, who belongs to Syria’s Christian minority, staunchly defended Assad’s crackdown on the 20-month revolt against five decades of autocratic rule by Assad and his late father.
A former diplomat, Makdissi is fluent in English, a rarity in the state apparatus shaped by xenophobic Baath Party ideology. But he had little influence in a system underpinned by the security apparatus in which the foreign ministry has no say.
Lebanon’s Al-Manar Television said earlier that Makdissi had been sacked for making statements which did not reflect official positions.
In a separate development, Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Istanbul with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks covering their opposing views on Syria and how to deal with a conflict that has claimed around 41,000 lives since March 2011, according to one monitoring group.
Yesterday, an air strike killed at least 12 people — eight rebels and four civilians — and wounded more than 30 in the northeastern town of Ras Al-Ain on the border with Turkey, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The warplane hit the Mahata district “controlled by the (jihadist) Al-Nusra Front, Ghuraba Al-Sham and other rebel battalions,” the Observatory said. The Observatory also reported that artillery gunners on Sunday targeted the Damascus districts of Hajar Al-Aswad and Tadamun as well as the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk in the south of the capital.
The army bombarded Yabrud to the north, Yalda to the south and the Eastern Ghouta towns of Douma, Harasta, Irbin and Haran Al-Hawamid, in the area of the road linking Damascus to its international airport, it said.
In the south, aircraft bombed Beit Sahem and its orchards as fierce clashes raged on the ground between troops and rebels, the Observatory said.