Thursday, December 6, 2012

Israel reportedly threatens to cancel Gaza truce if Islamic Jihad heads enter Strip

 
Members of the Iranian proxy group Islamic Jihad praying in Gaza on the 17th anniversary of the death of the group's founder, Fathi Shikaki (Photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash 90)
Two of Iranian-linked group’s top officials planned to join Hamas leader Mashaal for visit on Friday
 
 
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Members of Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad say Israel has warned the militant group’s two top leaders against trying to enter the Gaza Strip this week.
 
The pair had planned to visit Friday, along with the leader-in-exile of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal.
 
Israel warned that it would consider the three-week truce with Gaza over should the Islamic Jhad leaders enter the Strip, according to two Islamic Jihad members, who said the message was relayed by Egypt. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the issue with the media.
 
Islamic Jihad is Hamas’s sister group and was instrumental in helping the terror group battle Israel during last month’s Gaza mini-war.
 
Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas have been holding indirect talks, through Egypt, following Operation Pillar of Defense, which Israel launched to halt Gazan rocket fire on Israeli civilians.
 
The Defense Ministry had no immediate comment.
 

Endtime News Updates 12-06-12 - Are we days away from Ps. 83; Isa. 17; J...with Hummingbird027


Chemical Syria: 'Enemies of Allah will die like rabbits'


European protest against the construction of new Jerusalem homes was coordinated with the Obama administration!

Obama spies on Jews in Jerusalem
 
121205maaleadumim
 
 
JERUSALEM – The Obama administration and the European Union are closely monitoring Jewish construction in an eastern section of Jerusalem where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government announced a plan to build 3,400 new homes, a European envoy here told WND.

The European envoy to Israel confirmed a story yesterday on Israel’s Ynetnews.com website reporting this week’s European protest against the construction of new Jerusalem homes was coordinated with the Obama administration, according to an Israeli official.

“The European move is essentially an American move. The Brits asked the Americans how to act,” an unnamed Israeli official with close ties to the U.S. administration told Ynetnews.com.

Israel’s Higher Planning Council of the Israel Defense Forces’ Civil Administration yesterday vowed to go forward with plans to construct the new homes in what is known as the E-1 corridor between Ma’ale Adumim, an eastern Jerusalem suburb, and a neighborhood closer to western Jerusalem called Pisgat Zeev.

The Palestinians seek a state that encompasses undefined areas of eastern Jerusalem. Israeli prime ministers have been adamant that the major Jewish neighborhoods of Ma’ale Adumim, Gilo and Pisgat Zeev will remain within Israeli jurisdiction in any future deal.

Israel’s decision to build the new homes followed last week’s vote at the United Nations General Assembly to upgrade the Palestinian Authority’s status to non-member observer state.

The new housing decision prompted European countries to summon Israel’s ambassadors in protest.

Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark and Spain on Monday all summoned the Israeli ambassadors to their respective countries to express their condemnation of Netanyahu’s decision. On Tuesday, Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Finland and Egypt also filed protests.

The European envoy told WND the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem and European embassies here are closely monitoring any Jewish construction in both eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Last month, WND reported Obama administration diplomats were monitoring Jewish housing construction projects in two Jerusalem neighborhoods, according to informed Israeli officials.

The U.S. consular staff had visited Gilo and Pisgat Zeev, the officials said.

WND first reported in 2009 that the Obama administration had set up an apparatus to closely monitor Jewish construction in Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank to the point of watching Israeli moves house-to-house in certain key neighborhoods, according to Israeli officials.

In March 2009, Obama’s then-Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, oversaw the establishment of an enhanced apparatus based in the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that closely monitors the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods, incorporating regular tours of the areas, at times on a daily basis, the officials said.

Previously, under the Bush administration, the consulate kept a general eye on Jewish Jerusalem and West Bank construction, receiving much of its information from nongovernmental organizations.

“Mitchell’s apparatus takes things to a whole new level. They are watching very closely,” said an Israeli official.

Iranians prepare terror campaign inside U.S.

'There are numerous Revolutionary Guard cells' inside borders
 
 
RevGuards
 
 
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is alive and well in the U.S. and the country’s law enforcement officials ignore them at their peril, according to former U. S. Air Force officer Steven O’Hern.
O’Hern says that the Revolutionary Guard, long an influential factor in the radical Islamic regime in Iran, does most of its surveillance and intelligence gathering through its proxy force, Hezbollah, considered by many to be a terror group.
 
“In the United States, the Revolutionary Guard uses more than one approach. Hezbollah operatives and sympathizers are present in large numbers in many parts of the United States and actively conduct reconnaissance missions that develop information, photographs, and diagrams of federal buildings, and infrastructure targets,” O’Hern said.
 
“Those targets include such things as water utilities or electrical substations, and other potential targets to give the Guard the ability to quickly order a terrorist strike in our homeland,” O’Hern said.
 
He explains that the Revolutionary Guard is working through Shi’a mosques around the United States as well as the nation’s Lebanese immigrant communities.
 
WND previously reported that a former Iranian official who has knowledge of Iran’s terror network estimated there are more than 40,000 of the regime’s security, intelligence and propaganda forces in the West, largely in friendly South American nations.
 
And WND has reported that Muslims are using mosques, including some in the United States, as terror command centers.
 
It is the Guards’ intelligence office that runs financing, recruiting and other strategies through Islamic centers and mosques, including some in New York and Ohio.
 
 
O’Hern, who has written “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard,” about the issue, said the primary mission of the Iran Revolutionary Guard and its Hezbollah proxy is to weaken the U. S. national security.
 
“In the United States, the Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah have a long-term mission of gathering intelligence on homeland targets and maintaining the capability to deliver multiple terrorist attacks if the IRGC chooses to do so,” O’Hern said. “I say ‘maintain’ because the Guard has already developed it.”
 
He said attacks could be ordered in retaliation if Iran’s nuclear program is hit, or, “Sleeper cells could even be ordered into action if economic sanctions were so successful that the regime was in danger.”
 
“Attacks against the U.S. homeland are only one place where the IRGC can strike – it also can attack U.S. troops and facilities in Afghanistan, Africa, Europe, all of which are closer,” O’Hern said.
 
O’Hern’s findings are affirmed by the analysis of a former Defense Department analyst who has asked not to be named for security reasons. The analyst points to the major Arab-American communities in the major cities, especially in Dearborn, Mich., and the San Francisco Bay area.
 
“It is my sense that IRGC will rely more on Hezbollah in the U.S. than having their own operatives here. The reason for that is Hezbollah presence is primarily through the concentration of the Arab-American communities, mainly Lebanese, throughout the U.S., such as in Michigan and elsewhere,” the source said.
 
Former FBI counterterrorism officer and Islam analyst John Guandolo agrees that the Revolutionary Guard has a presence in the United States, and it operates through the major Shi’a communities.
 
“This is the Iranian government’s military activity in the U.S,” he said.
 
Guandolo, who established Guandolo and Associates in 2012, says that when it comes to working to undermine non-Muslim countries, Shi’a and Sunni Muslims work together.
 
“We do know the Sunni and Shi’a groups that are hostile to the United States are working together. In Lebanon, Iraq, and other places we see Hezbollah, by Iran, and Hamas with al-Qaida, working together on the ground,” Guandolo said.
 
“In the United States, the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization, the Islamic Society of North America, put forth the ISNA Code of Honor which says Sunni Muslims will not challenge other Muslims, the Shi’a, on their Takfiri, their legitimacy,” Guandolo said.
 
“All Muslims are focused on a similar goal. In other words, the Muslim world is working towards one goal right now and they have written agreements and are working on the ground around the world together,” Guandolo said, “So, yes, Hamas, CAIR works with Hezbollah, which is basically the IRGC.”
 
The former Defense Department analyst says the Revolutionary Guard operates the same way worldwide.
 
“That is similar in Africa and Latin America. Like Iran, Hezbollah is mainly Shi’a, although it will have some Sunnis and even some Christian Lebanese who are sympathetic here,” the former Defense Department analyst said.
 
“There is a major Hezbollah contingent, for example, in Canada. It would be much easier for Iran to work through them and the extensive Lebanese communities throughout the U.S. than to seek to establish a major independent presence,” the Defense Department analyst said.
 
Still, he said, it’s possible that the IRGC itself may have operational units working in the United States.
 
“However, I don’t doubt that IRGC may have some operatives here acting as liaison with the Hezbollah elements here. In Lebanon, the IRGC presence is more open with representatives working out of the Iranian embassy in Beirut,” the Defense Department analyst said.
 
A former CIA station chief agrees, concluding that in the final analysis, Muslims will work together in combating their major enemy, the United States.
 
“Like al-Qaida in Sunni mosques, any Lebanese Shi’a or Hezbollah member here is a de facto Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps terrorist. Some 20 percent of all mosques in the U.S. are Shi’a, therefore they are de facto representatives of the Revolutionary Guard,” the former CIA station chief said.
 
O’Hern says that the IRGC and Hezbollah fund their operations through a set of illegal activities.
 
“Hezbollah harvests large amounts of money from the United States to support its operations – millions of dollars from criminal enterprises such as narcotics trafficking, the sale of counterfeit goods, and financial crimes are sent back to Hezbollah from our country every year,” O’Hern said.
 
WND reported in September 2011 that IRGC proxy Hezbollah had been suspected of funding operations by raising money through the network of U.S. Shi’a mosques located in cities with large Lebanese immigrant populations.
 
Former Air Force and State Department security officer Dave Gaubatz says it appears the reason for raising money is to give money to Hezbollah.
 
The FBI and the IRS were unavailable for comment on this story. Congressional representatives and federal regulatory agencies also contacted about the issue either referred WND to another office or refused comment.
 

U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands

 
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.
 
No evidence has emerged linking the weapons provided by the Qataris during the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to the attack that killed four Americans at the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in September. 
      
But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not previously been reported.
 
The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government. 
      
The experience in Libya has taken on new urgency as the administration considers whether to play a direct role in arming rebels in Syria, where weapons are flowing in from Qatar and other countries. 
      
The Obama administration did not initially raise objections when Qatar began shipping arms to opposition groups in Syria, even if it did not offer encouragement, according to current and former administration officials. But they said the United States has growing concerns that, just as in Libya, the Qataris are equipping some of the wrong militants. 
      
The United States, which had only small numbers of C.I.A. officers in Libya during the tumult of the rebellion, provided little oversight of the arms shipments. Within weeks of endorsing Qatar’s plan to send weapons there in spring 2011, the White House began receiving reports that they were going to Islamic militant groups.
 
They were “more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam” than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official. 
      
The Qatari assistance to fighters viewed as hostile by the United States demonstrates the Obama administration’s continuing struggles in dealing with the Arab Spring uprisings, as it tries to support popular protest movements while avoiding American military entanglements. Relying on surrogates allows the United States to keep its fingerprints off operations, but also means they may play out in ways that conflict with American interests. 
      
“To do this right, you have to have on-the-ground intelligence and you have to have experience,” said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser who is now dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, part of Johns Hopkins University.
 
“If you rely on a country that doesn’t have those things, you are really flying blind. When you have an intermediary, you are going to lose control.” 
      
He said that Qatar would not have gone through with the arms shipments if the United States had resisted them, but other current and former administration officials said Washington had little leverage at times over Qatari officials. “They march to their own drummer,” said a former senior State Department official. The White House and State Department declined to comment. 
      
During the frantic early months of the Libyan rebellion, various players motivated by politics or profit — including an American arms dealer who proposed weapons transfers in an e-mail exchange with a United States emissary later killed in Benghazi — sought to aid those trying to oust Colonel Qaddafi. 
      
But after the White House decided to encourage Qatar — and on a smaller scale, the United Arab Emirates — to ship arms to the Libyans, President Obama complained in April 2011 to the emir of Qatar that his country was not coordinating its actions in Libya with the United States, the American officials said. “The president made the point to the emir that we needed transparency about what Qatar was doing in Libya,” said a former senior administration official who had been briefed on the matter. 
      
About that same time, Mahmoud Jibril, then the prime minister of the Libyan transitional government, expressed frustration to administration officials that the United States was allowing Qatar to arm extremist groups opposed to the new leadership, according to several American officials. They, like nearly a dozen current and former White House, diplomatic, intelligence, military and foreign officials, would speak only on the condition of anonymity for this article. 
      
The administration has never determined where all of the weapons, paid for by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, went inside Libya, officials said. Qatar is believed to have shipped by air and sea small arms, including machine guns, automatic rifles, and ammunition, for which it has demanded reimbursement from Libya’s new government. Some of the arms since have been moved from Libya to militants with ties to Al Qaeda in Mali, where radical jihadi factions have imposed Shariah law in the northern part of the country, the former Defense Department official said. Others have gone to Syria, according to several American and foreign officials and arms traders. 
      
Although NATO provided air support that proved critical for the Libyan rebels, the Obama administration wanted to avoid getting immersed in a ground war, which officials feared could lead the United States into another quagmire in the Middle East.
 
As a result, the White House largely relied on Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, two small Persian Gulf states and frequent allies of the United States. Qatar, a tiny nation whose natural gas reserves have made it enormously wealthy, for years has tried to expand its influence in the Arab world. Since 2011, with dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa coming under siege, Qatar has given arms and money to various opposition and militant groups, chiefly Sunni Islamists, in hopes of cementing alliances with the new governments. Officials from Qatar and the emirates would not comment.
 
After discussions among members of the National Security Council, the Obama administration backed the arms shipments from both countries, according to two former administration officials briefed on the talks. 
      
American officials say that the United Arab Emirates first approached the Obama administration during the early months of the Libyan uprising, asking for permission to ship American-built weapons that the United States had supplied for the emirates’ use.
 
The administration rejected that request, but instead urged the emirates to ship weapons to Libya that could not be traced to the United States. 
      
“The U.A.E. was asking for clearance to send U.S. weapons,” said one former official. “We told them it’s O.K. to ship other weapons.” 
      
For its part, Qatar supplied weapons made outside the United States, including French- and Russian-designed arms, according to people familiar with the shipments. 
      
But the American support for the arms shipments from Qatar and the emirates could not be completely hidden. NATO air and sea forces around Libya had to be alerted not to interdict the cargo planes and freighters transporting the arms into Libya from Qatar and the emirates, American officials said. 
      
Concerns in Washington soon rose about the groups Qatar was supporting, officials said. A debate over what to do about the weapons shipments dominated at least one meeting of the so-called Deputies Committee, the interagency panel consisting of the second-highest ranking officials in major agencies involved in national security. “There was a lot of concern that the Qatar weapons were going to Islamist groups,” one official recalled. 
      
The Qataris provided weapons, money and training to various rebel groups in Libya. One militia that received aid was controlled by Adel Hakim Belhaj, then leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who was held by the C.I.A. in 2004 and is now considered a moderate politician in Libya. It is unclear which other militants received the aid. 
      
“Nobody knew exactly who they were,” said the former defense official. The Qataris, the official added, are “supposedly good allies, but the Islamists they support are not in our interest.”
No evidence has surfaced that any weapons went to Ansar al-Shariah, an extremist group blamed for the Benghazi attack. 
      
The case of Marc Turi, the American arms merchant who had sought to provide weapons to Libya, demonstrates other challenges the United States faced in dealing with Libya. A dealer who lives in both Arizona and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Turi sells small arms to buyers in the Middle East and Africa, relying primarily on suppliers of Russian-designed weapons in Eastern Europe. 
      
In March 2011, just as the Libyan civil war was intensifying, Mr. Turi realized that Libya could be a lucrative new market, and applied to the State Department for a license to provide weapons to the rebels there, according to e-mails and other documents he has provided. (American citizens are required to obtain United States approval for any international arms sales.) 
      
He also e-mailed J. Christopher Stevens, then the special representative to the Libyan rebel alliance. The diplomat said he would “share” Mr. Turi’s proposal with colleagues in Washington, according to e-mails provided by Mr. Turi. Mr. Stevens, who became the United States ambassador to Libya, was one of the four Americans killed in the Benghazi attack on Sept. 11. 
      
Mr. Turi’s application for a license was rejected in late March 2011. Undeterred, he applied again, this time stating only that he planned to ship arms worth more than $200 million to Qatar. In May 2011, his application was approved. Mr. Turi, in an interview, said that his intent was to get weapons to Qatar and that what “the U.S. government and Qatar allowed from there was between them.”
       
Two months later, though, his home near Phoenix was raided by agents from the Department of Homeland Security. Administration officials say he remains under investigation in connection with his arms dealings. The Justice Department would not comment. 
      
Mr. Turi said he believed that United States officials had shut down his proposed arms pipeline because he was getting in the way of the Obama administration’s dealings with Qatar. The Qataris, he complained, imposed no controls on who got the weapons. “They just handed them out like candy,” he said.
 

(WORD FROM ISRAEL) We all know that at the first sight of any US strike in Syria the missiles will start flying towards Israel

This Time it Looks Bad - Really Bad!
Here we go again! The question is; will a full blown Middle East war happen this time? My guess is it sure looks like it. But there just might be a big surprise in store as to what Assad's real targets are. The newspapers here in Israel are all saying that the 700 chemically armed missiles in Assad's arsenal are aimed at Turkey and Jordan who have both become his enemies. The news coming out of the US is that Assad will use them on his own people and the US is using that as a pretext to intervene with military force. But Assad has stated over and over he will not use them on his own people. I know Assad like most Muslin Arab leaders is a liar, but on this one matter I believe him. That does not rule out a "false flag" event that announces the use of chemical weapons being used on the Syrian people. I think most of us know that is the way the US has been doing business for some time now? 
 
With Assad saying he will not use the chemical weapons on his own people, and if that is the truth (who knows?) then who in their right mind think he will choose to use them on Jordan or Turkey before sending them to Israel? He knows it would be a suicidal act on his part and that his future would surely be set in cement for his execution once he uses chemical weapons- if it isn't already. There will simply be no place for him to hide after he does such a thing.
 
But if he sends them to Israel one thing will happen. The Arab Muslim world will consider him a great leader if he kills a lot of Jews on his way out. With this kind of Islamic Muslim logic it is my guess that Israel is about to be attacked once again in the name of Allah. Many will die if this happens - Jews and "Palestinians" as well. But the so-called Palestinians will rejoice anyway for they love death more than we love life. 
 
Maybe I should explain why I think this is about to happen? Here in the eastern Mediterranean sea we have been having a really bad storm over the past few days. So bad in fact that I have had to put on hold some movement of boats (enough said). In short it is not a time even for aircraft carriers and battleships to do any unnecessary movement unless it is an emergency. But in this terrible weather with waves breaking over our sea walls here in Israel they came through the Suez Canal and are now sitting just offshore, outside the Syrian sea-border with many thousands of US marines and many jetfighter aircraft and without any doubt a nuclear sub or two. But what really tells me that this is about to happen is the propaganda we are hearing from the 'Major News Media' justifying in advance the US strike. We all know that at the first sight of any US strike in Syria the missiles will start flying towards Israel. That will of course bring Israel into the action and in short order all hell will break loose in the region. There is also an Obama factor that I will let you think of on your own.
 
When the smoke clears, Israel will still be here and still the only safe place for Jews in this world. It will be the beginning of what this ministry is all about. I pray daily for God to supply the things needed to save many.
 
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for our son Joel and all the IDF soldiers. Pray for this Ministry and your part in it.
 
Shalom, Jerry Golden
 

The UN asks for control over the world’s Internet!

WELCOME TO THE "NEW WORLD ORDER"
 
AFP Photo / Emmanuel Dunand
 
Members of the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) have agreed to work towards implementing a standard for the Internet that would allow for eavesdropping on a worldwide scale.
At a conference in Dubai this week, the ITU members decided to adopt the Y.2770 standard for deep packet inspection, a top-secret proposal by way of China that will allow telecom companies across the world to more easily dig through data passed across the Web.

According to the UN, implementing deep-packet inspection, or DPI, on such a global scale will allow authorities to more easily detect the transferring and sharing of copyrighted materials and other protected files by finding a way for administrators to analyze the payload of online transmissions, not just the header data that is normally identified and interpreted.

“It is standard procedure to route packets based on their headers, after all it is the part of the packet that contains information on the packet's intended destination,” writes The Inquirer’s Lawrence Lati, “but by inspecting the contents of each packet ISPs, governments and anyone else can look at sensitive data. While users can mitigate risks by encrypting data, given enough resources encryption can be foiled.”

Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist widely regarded as the ‘Father of the Internet,’ spoke out against proposed DPI implementation on such a grandiose scale during an address earlier this year at the World Wide Web Consortium.

"Somebody clamps a deep packet inspection thing on your cable which reads every packet and reassembles the web pages, cataloguing them against your name, address and telephone number either to be given to the government when they ask for it or to be sold to the highest bidder – that's a really serious breach of privacy,” he said.

Blogger Arthur Herman writes this week for Fox News online that the goal of the delegates at the ITU “is to grab control of the World Wide Web away from the United States, and hand it to a UN body of bureaucrats.”

“It’ll be the biggest power grab in the UN’s history, as well as a perversion of its power,” he warns.

The ITU’s secretary general, Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, has dismissed critics who have called the proposed DPI model invasive, penning an op-ed this week where he insists his organization’s meeting in Dubai poses “no threat to free speech.”

“It is our chance to chart a globally-agreed roadmap to connect the unconnected, while ensuring there is investment to create the infrastructure needed for the exponential growth in voice, video and data traffic,” Dr. Toure claims of the conference, adding that it presents the UN with “a golden opportunity to provide affordable connectivity for all, including the billions of people worldwide who cannot yet go online.”

Despite his explanation, though, some nation-states and big-name businesses remain opposed to the proposal. The ITU’s conference this week has been held behind closed doors, and representatives with online service providers Google, Facebook and Twitter have been barred from attending.

In a report published this week by CNet, tech journalist Declan McCullagh cites a Korean document that describes the confidential Y.2770 standard as being able to identify "embedded digital watermarks in MP3 data," discover "copyright protected audio content," find "Jabber messages with Spanish text," or "identify uploading BitTorrent users."

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed a Senate resolution that asks for the American government to oppose any efforts by the United Nations to control the Internet.

Could this be true?

Syria: West using chemical weapons as intervention excuse
 
Syria's FM Moualem meets UN-AL peace envoy
 
BEIRUT - Western powers are whipping up fears of a fateful move to the use of chemical weapons in Syria's civil war as a "pretext for intervention", President Bashar Assad's deputy foreign minister said on Thursday.

He spoke as Germany's cabinet approved stationing Patriot anti-missile batteries on Turkey's border with Syria, a step requiring deployment of NATO troops that Syria fears could permit imposition of a no-fly zone over its territory.

"Syria stresses again, for the tenth, the hundredth time, that if we had such weapons, they would not be used against its people. We would not commit suicide," Faisal Maqdad said.

US President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders have warned that using chemical weapons would cross a red line and "there would be consequences". Assad would probably lose vital diplomatic support from Russia and China that has blocked military intervention in the 20-month-old uprising that has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

Maqdad said Western reports that the Syrian military was preparing chemical weapons for use against rebel forces trying to close in on the capital Damascus were simply "theater".

"In fact, we fear a conspiracy ... by the United States and some European states, which might have supplied such weapons to terrorist organizations in Syria, in order to claim later that Syria is the one that used these weapons," he said on Lebanon's Al Manar television, the voice of Hezbollah.

"We fear there is a conspiracy to provide a pretext for any subsequent interventions in Syria by these countries that are increasing pressure on Syria."

Exactly what Syria's army has done with suspected chemical weapons to prompt a surge of Western warnings is not clear. 

 Reports citing Western intelligence and defense sources are vague and inconsistent.

The perceived threat may be discussed in Dublin on Thursday when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meet international Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi to try to put a UN peace process for Syria back on track.

The talks come ahead of a meeting of the Western-backed "Friends of Syria" group in Marrakech next week which is expected to boost support for rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Brahimi wants world powers to issue a UN Security Council resolution calling for a transitional administration.

In addition to the possible use of chemical bombs by "an increasingly desperate" Assad, Clinton said Washington was concerned about the government losing control of such weapons to extreme Islamist armed groups among the rebel forces.

The United States is considering blacklisting one group suspected of ties to al-Qaida. US officials confirmed that Jabhat al-Nusra, an influential rebel group accused of indiscriminate tactics that has advocated an Islamic state in Syria, was under review for blacklisting.

An explosion in front of the Damascus headquarters of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent killed at least one person on Thursday, Syrian state television said.

It blamed "terrorists from al-Qaida" -- a term often employed to refer to rebel forces.

Meanwhile, activists said the army pummeled several eastern suburbs of Damascus, where the rebels are dominant, with artillery and mortar fire. The suburbs have also been cut off from the city's water and electricity for weeks, rebels say, accusing the government of collective punishment.

Assad responded to past warnings about chemical weapons by taking steps to secure them, according to Israel's vice prime minister Moshe Yaalon.

"There is speculation that the chemical arsenal will fall into the hostile and irresponsible hands of the likes of al-Qaida or other terrorist groups. In the past, clear messages were relayed to Assad on a number of occasions, and in response Assad in fact gathered up the weaponry and separated the materials," Yaalon said on Wednesday.

Rebels say they have surrounded an air base 4 km (2-1/2 mikes) from the center of Damascus, a fresh sign the battle is closing in on the Syrian capital.

Maqdad, in his interview on Thursday, argued that reports of such advances were untrue: "What is sad is that foreign countries believe these repeated rumours." But residents inside the capital say that the sound of shelling on the outskirts has become a constant backdrop and many fear the fight will soon come to Damascus.

The Western military alliance's decision to send US, German and Dutch Patriot missile batteries to help defend the Turkish border would bring European and US troops to Syria's frontier for the first time in the 20-month-old civil war.

The actual deployment could take several weeks.

"Some countries now are now supplying Turkey with missiles for which there is no excuse. Syria is not going to attack the Turkish people," Maqdad said.

But a veteran Turkish commentator, Cengiz Candar of the Radikal newspaper, said Ankara fears Syria's 500 short-range ballistic missiles could fall into the wrong hands.

The government is "of the view that Syria was not expected to use them against Turkey, but that there was a risk of these weapons falling into the hands of 'uncontrolled forces' when the regime collapses", he wrote.



Britain eyes arms embargo changes to help Syria rebels

LONDON - Britain will seek next week to amend an arms embargo on Syria to make it easier to help opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Foreign Office said on Thursday.

A Foreign Office official said the increased "practical support" that Britain envisaged would be training and non-lethal equipment. Items such as body armor and night-vision goggles are currently caught up in a European arms embargo aimed at stemming supplies to Assad's forces.

European foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels on Monday.


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