US weighing military options if Syria uses WMD
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House and its allies are weighing military options to secure Syria's
chemical and biological weapons, after U.S. intelligence reports show
the Syrian regime may be readying those weapons and may be desperate
enough to use them, U.S. officials said Monday.
President Barack Obama, in a
speech at the National Defense University on Monday, pointedly warned
Syrian President Bashar Assad not to use his arsenal.
"Today I want to make it
absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command: The world is
watching," Obama said. "The use of chemical weapons is and would be
totally unacceptable. And if you make the tragic mistake of using these
weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Prague for meetings with Czech officials, said she wouldn't outline any specifics.
"But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur," Clinton said.
Options now being considered
range from aerial strikes to limited raids by regional forces to secure
the stockpiles, according to one current U.S. official, and one former
U.S. official, briefed on the matter. The officials spoke on condition
of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue
publicly.
The administration remains
reluctant to dispatch U.S. forces into Syria, but a U.S. special
operations training team is in neighboring Jordan, teaching troops there
how to safely secure such sites together with other troops from the
region, the officials said.
The warnings to Syria come after
U.S. intelligence detected signs the Syrian regime was moving the
chemical weapons components around within several of Syria's chemical
weapons sites in recent days, according to a senior U.S. defense
official and two U.S. officials speaking on Monday. The activities
involved movement within the sites, rather than the transfer of
components in or out of various sites, two of the officials said.
But they were activities they had not seen before, that bear further scrutiny, one said.
Another senior U.S. official
described it as "indications of preparations" for a possible use of the
chemical weapons. The U.S. still doesn't know whether the regime is
planning to use them, but the official says there is greater concern
because there is the sense that the Assad regime is under greater
pressure now.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters.
U.S. intelligence officials also
intercepted one communication within the last six months they believe
was between Iran's infamous Quds Force, urging Syrian regime members to
use its supplies of toxic Sarin gas against rebels and the civilians
supporting them in the besieged city of Homs, a former U.S. official
said. That report was not matched by other intelligence agencies, and
other intelligence officials have said Iran also does not want the
Syrians to use their chemical weapons.
The Assad regime insists it would not use such weapons against
Syrians, though it carefully does not admit to having them. The Ministry
of Foreign Affairs said the government "would not use chemical weapons —
if there are any — against its own people under any circumstances." The
regime is party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning chemical weapons in
war.The Syrian assurances did not placate the White House.
"We are concerned that in an
increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation of violence
through conventional means inadequate, might be considering the use of
chemical weapons against the Syrian people," said White House press
secretary Jay Carney.
"Assad has killed so many of his people, I just wouldn't be surprised
if he turned these weapons on them," added Maryland Rep. Dutch
Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee,
after intelligence briefings Monday.
An administration official said
the trigger for U.S. action of some kind is the use of chemical weapons,
or movement with the intent to use them, or the intent to provide them
to a terrorist group like Hezbollah. The U.S. is trying to determine
whether the recent movement detected in Syria falls into any of those
categories, the official said. The administration official was speaking
on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to
speak publicly about the issue.
Israeli officials have repeatedly
expressed concerns that Syrian chemical weapons could slip into the
hands of Hezbollah or other anti-Israel groups, or even be fired toward
Israel in an act of desperation by Syria.
Syria has some 75 sites where
weapons are stored, but U.S. officials aren't sure they have tracked
down all the locations, and fear some stockpiles may have already been
moved. Syria is believed to have several hundred ballistic
surface-to-surface missiles capable of carrying chemical warheads, plus
several tons of material stored in either large drums, or in artillery
shells, which become deadly once fired.
"In Syria, they have everything
from mustard agent, Sarin nerve gas, and some variant of the nerve agent
VX," according to James Quinlivan, a Rand Corp. analyst who specializes
in the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.
A primary argument against sending in U.S. ground troops is that
whoever takes possession of the chemical weapons will be responsible for
destroying them, as part of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.
Destroying Syria's stockpiles could cost hundreds of millions of
dollars, and take more than a decade, Quinlivan said.
Syria's arsenal is a particular
threat to the American allies, Turkey and Israel, and Obama singled out
the threat posed by the unconventional weapons earlier this year as a
potential cause for deeper U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war. Up to
now, the United States has opposed military intervention or providing
arms support to Syria's rebels for fear of further militarizing a
conflict that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since
March 2011.
Activity has been detected at Syrian weapons sites before.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
said in late September the intelligence suggested the Syrian government
had moved some of its chemical weapons in order to protect them. He said
the U.S. believed that the main sites remained secure.
Asked Monday if they were still considered secure, Pentagon press
secretary George Little declined to comment about any intelligence
related to the weapons.
Senior lawmakers were notified
last week that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected activity related
to Syria's chemical and biological weapons, said a U.S. intelligence
official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door
meetings. All congressional committees with an interest in Syria, from
the intelligence to the armed services committees, are now being kept
informed.
"I can't comment on these
reports, but I have been very concerned for some time now about Syria's
stockpiles of chemical weapons and its stocks of advanced conventional
weapons like shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles," said House
intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich.
"We are not doing enough to
prepare for the collapse of the Assad regime, and the dangerous vacuum
it will create. Use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be an
extremely serious escalation that would demand decisive action from the
rest of the world," he added.
The U.S. and Jordan share the same concern about Syria's chemical and
biological weapons — that they could fall into the wrong hands should
the regime in Syria collapse and lose control of them.
___
Associated Press writers Bradley
Klapper in Prague, Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Albert Aji in Damascus
and Matthew Lee, Lolita C. Baldor and Julie Pace in Washington
contributed to this report.
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