US urged to cancel Russia arms deal over Syria
14 Mar 2012
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jTwSYN1mfsy6Uaq0gVQ_Ozd3UbYQ?docId=CNG.c81b92f67b60128221bc14e9e7a882c9.291
WASHINGTON — US senators are urging the Pentagon to cancel a contract with a Russian company approaching $1 billion to buy helicopters for Afghanistan, voicing outrage over Moscow’s arming of Syria.
“US taxpayers should not be put in a position where they are indirectly subsidizing the mass murder of Syrian civilians,” 17 senators across party lines wrote Monday in a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
The United States plans to buy 21 Mi-17 helicopters for the Afghan military from Russia’s Rosoboronexport by 2016. The contract totals $375 million by 2016, with an option to buy $550 million worth more, according to the letter.
Russia has refused to stop arms shipments to Syria and has offered diplomatic support to President Bashar al-Assad as he puts down a year-long revolt that activists say has killed more than 8,500 people, mostly civilians.
The senators voiced alarm at reports that Rosoboronexport has shipped arms to Syria and that Syrian forces used Russian weapons in opposition stronghold Homs.
Activists recently said the throats of 47 women and children were slit in a massacre in Homs, following a month-long bombardment of the rebellious Baba Amr neighborhood where 700 people were said to have died.
“We urge you to use all available leverage to press Russia and Russian entities to end their support of the Assad regime, and that includes ending all (Department of Defense) business dealings with Rosoboronexport,” the senators wrote to Panetta.
The letter’s signatories included Dick Durbin, the number-two senator from President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, and Jon Kyl, the number-two senator from the rival Republican Party.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland did not take a position on the senators’ letter but said the contract would upgrade the Russian-made fleet that forms the backbone of Afghanistan’s fledgling military.
“We obviously share the intent, which is to persuade Russia to end its arms supply to Syria,” Nuland told reporters.
But she said if the contract were canceled, “it would seriously hurt our effort to get the Afghans increasingly into the lead of their own security.”
President Barack Obama hopes that Afghan forces can take care of their own security to allow US forces to leave by the end of 2014, ending an increasingly unpopular war launched more than a decade ago after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The task has become even more urgent amid outrage over a US soldier’s massacre of 16 Afghan villagers.
Russia Says Arms Sales to Syria Will Continue Despite Uproar
14 March 2012
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-says-arms-sales-to-syria-will-continue-despite-uproar/454617.html
A senior defense official said Tuesday that Russia sees no reason to curtail military cooperation with the Syrian government despite calls from the West to stop arming President Bashar Assad’s regime.
Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Russia will abide by existing contracts to deliver weapons to Syria.
He told reporters that Russia enjoys “good, strong military technical cooperation with Syria, and we see no reason to reconsider it.”
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that those battling the Syrian government must lay down their arms at the same time as government forces and face equal demands to withdraw from their positions.
“This must be simultaneous. There must not be a situation where it is demanded that the government leave cities and towns and this is not demanded of armed groups,” Lavrov said a day after sparring with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the United Nations over how to stop the Syrian conflict. “A unilateral withdrawal of government forces is absolutely unrealistic.”
Russia has blocked UN sanctions over Assad’s yearlong crackdown on the opposition in which an estimated 7,500 people have been killed.
Lavrov’s call came as the UN said it would soon deploy human rights monitors in countries bordering Syria to collect eyewitness testimony on “atrocities” committed in the country.
“We will be sending monitors for documentation of atrocities in bordering countries later this week,” Kyung-wha Kang, Deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the UN Human Rights Council during a debate on the Syrian crisis.
The UN refugee agency in Geneva also said Tuesday that some 230,000 Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of violence last year.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ coordinator for Syria says 30,000 people have already fled to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan and “on a daily basis hundreds of people are still crossing into neighboring countries.”
Panos Moumtzis told reporters that according to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent at least 200,000 people are also displaced within the country.
He says some 110,000, mostly Iraqi refugees living in Syria are meanwhile reporting increased hardship due to rising prices for basic goods.
Moumtzis says prices for imported goods have “skyrocketed” because of the devaluation of the Syrian pound.
In Ankara, UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said he was expecting to hear a response from the Syrian government on Tuesday on the “concrete proposals” he made to end the violence during weekend talks with Assad.
Annan has not disclosed what those proposals entailed.
Syria’s ambassador to Moscow said Monday that the discussion between Assad and Annan had echoed ‘five principles’ for a Syrian settlement agreed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday.