Syria

West opens security contacts with Damascus

n00150589-bThe intelligence services of some Western countries opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have visited Damascus to discuss security cooperation with his government, Syria’s deputy foreign minister said in remarks broadcast on Wednesday.

“I will not specify [which countries] but many of them have visited Damascus, yes,” the deputy minister, Faisal Mekdad, said in an interview with the BBC.

Asked about the report, US Secretary of State John Kerry indicated he was not aware of such contacts.

“I don’t know anything about that. Certainly not under my auspices” has there been any contact of that kind, he told reporters in Kuwait, where he is on a visit.

Mekdad said that the contacts appeared to show a rift between the political and security authorities in some countries opposed to Assad.

Western powers have supported the opposition with rhetoric but have backed away from material aid as al-Qaeda-linked groups take advantage of a power vacuum in opposition-held regions.

Western countries are worried about the presence in opposition ranks of foreign hard-line militants who have traveled to Syria to join a near three-year-old struggle to topple Assad.

“Frankly speaking the spirit has changed,” Mekdad added.

“When these countries ask us for security cooperation, then it seems to me there is a schism between the political and security leaderships.”

Asked if he was confirming that British intelligence had been in contact with Syria, he declined a direct reply.

“I am saying that many of these countries have contacted us to coordinate security measures,” he added.

An uprising against four decades of Assad family rule erupted in Syria in March 2011. It descended into an armed insurgency after the army cracked down on protests.

Regime forces advance
On Tuesday, the Syrian government has retaken territory around the northern city of Aleppo, the military said, after two weeks of opposition infighting that has weakened the insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.

The internecine conflict among some within the chaotic plethora of opposition groups will allow Assad to portray himself as the only secular alternative in Syria to a radical hard-line regime when peace talks begin in Switzerland on Jan. 22.

His military advances will give the Syrian government delegation greater leverage at the negotiating table.

An army statement said government forces had pushed out from their base at Aleppo’s international airport, southeast of the city, and were moving towards an industrial complex used as a opposition base and the al-Bab road, urgently needed by insurgents to supply the half of Aleppo under their control.

It said that government forces, along with militia loyal to Assad, were in “complete control” of the Naqareen, Zarzour, Taaneh and Subeihieh areas along the eastern side of Aleppo, which was the major Arab country’s commercial hub and most populous city before the conflict erupted in 2011.

Fighting between the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and rival hard-liners and more moderate have killed hundreds of people over two weeks and shaken ISIL, a militant faction led by foreign jihadists.

UN abandons aid delivery after Syria insists on dangerous route
Shooting forced the United Nations to abort a delivery of food and polio vaccines to a besieged area of Damascus after the Syrian government said it should use a circuitous and dangerous route, a UN spokesman said.

Aid workers in Syria have accused authorities of hampering deliveries to opposition-controlled areas and threatening groups with expulsion if they try to avoid bureaucratic obstacles to help the tens of thousands trapped in an almost three-year civil war. Syria blames opposition attacks for aid delays.

Most are stuck due to sieges by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, but deliveries of aid have also been hampered by opposition forces who are surrounding two northern towns.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said Damascus had authorised a six-truck convoy to deliver food for 6,000 people, 10,000 doses of polio vaccine and medical supplies to the Yarmouk Palestinian district where 15 people have died of malnutrition and 18,000 are trapped by fighting.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said in a statement the Syrian authorities “required” that it use the southern entrance to Yarmouk.

That meant it had to drive 20 km (12 miles) “through an area of intense and frequent armed conflict, in which numerous armed opposition groups, including some of the most extreme jihadist groups, have a strong and active presence”.

When the convoy passed the southern checkpoint, its Syrian government escort sent a bulldozer to clear the road of debris and it was fired on by unknown assailants.

Machinegun fire erupted and one mortar exploded close to the convoy, Gunness said, and UNRWA’s Syrian security detail told the convoy to withdraw. No one was wounded, he said.

Syria is home to half a million Palestinians, refugees of the 1948 conflict which led to the creation of the state of Israel. Before the 2011 uprising against Assad, many lived in Yarmouk on the southern edge of the Syrian capital.

Since then, around 70,000 Yarmouk residents have fled.

Those that remain have been trapped for months with opposition forces under a government siege. Opposition activists say the government is using hunger as a weapon of war against its people and the United Nations has called for greater access.

According to the Syrian government, opposition fighters are to blame for firing on aid convoys.

“Amid reports of widespread malnutrition in Yarmouk, amid reports of women dying during childbirth because of shortages of medical care, amid reports of children eating animal feed to survive, this is what happened to the UNRWA convoy,” Gunness said.
“This is an extremely disappointing setback for the residents of Yarmouk who continue to live in inhumanely wretched conditions.”

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