By BRADLEY KLAPPER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration
denounced Russia on Friday for providing Syrian President Bashar Assad's
regime with anti-ship missiles, saying the weapons would only worsen a
war that Washington and Moscow have been promising to work together on
stopping.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, criticized what he called an "unfortunate decision that will
embolden the regime and prolong the suffering." He spoke at a news
conference after the New York Times reported that Russia recently
delivered an advanced version of Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles to
Syria.
"It's ill-timed and very unfortunate," Dempsey said.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also urged Russia to
rethink its military aid, saying that the U.S. and Russia both wanted to
stabilize Syria after more than two years of civil war but that the
Kremlin's military support makes the situation even more dangerous.
"What we don't want to see happen, the Russians
don't want to see happen, is for Syria to erupt to the point where we
may well find a regional war in the Middle East," Hagel said.
"So we continue to work with the Russians on their
interests and everything we can do to convince the powers that are
involved in the region to be careful with escalation of military options
and equipment," he said, adding that the U.S. was planning for every
military contingency.
Dempsey's comments, in particular, seemed to
contradict that of the State Department, where spokeswoman Jen Psaki
said earlier Friday that the U.S. was aware of no "new shipments" of the
weapons.
For the Obama administration, the anti-ship
missiles are the second such worrying report in as many weeks at a time
when Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov say they are coordinating closely to try to get Syria's
government and rebels into the start of a peace negotiation. They are
hoping the talks begin next month in Geneva.
Almost immediately after last week's announcement
by Kerry and Lavrov of a new peace push, Israeli officials warned that
Moscow was preparing to give Assad state-of-the-art ground-to-air
missile systems in the coming months.
Both sets of missiles would only add to the
administration's reservations as it evaluates a range of options,
including military ones, to break the stalemate in Syria's civil war and
respond to evidence that Assad's forces used small amounts of chemical
weapons in two attacks in March. Obama previously declared chemical
weapons use his "red line" for a more forceful American intervention,
though Kerry and other U.S. officials have since suggested that no such
step would be taken while the new peace push still has hope.
The cruise missiles and the new surface-to-air
batteries would significantly upgrade the Assad regime's capacity to
target manned planes, drones and incoming missiles after its systems
were easily circumvented in 2007 when Israeli jets bombed a suspected
nuclear reactor site along the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria.
Apparently successful Israeli strikes in recent
weeks on weapons convoys to Hezbollah show the Syrian defenses are still
far from impregnable, but the new weaponry would make it harder for
United States to consider enforcing a no-fly zone in the country or
otherwise intervening militarily.
Dempsey also warned specifically about the
surface-to-air missiles, saying they provide Syria with defenses at
higher altitude and longer range, and with better tracking capability.
"It pushes the standoff distance a little more,
increases risk, but not impossible to overcome," he told reporters.
"What I really worry about is that Assad will decide that since he's got
these systems, he's somehow safer and more prone to a miscalculation."
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