Exclusive - West signals to Syrian opposition Assad may stay - Yahoo News India - 0 views
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(Reuters) - Western nations have indicated to the Syrian opposition that peace next month talks may not lead to the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and that his Alawite minority will remain key in any transitional administration, opposition sources said. The message, delivered to senior members of the Syrian National Coalition at a meeting of the anti-Assad Friends of Syria alliance in London last week, was prompted by rise of al Qaeda and other militant groups, and their takeover of a border crossing and arms depots near Turkey belonging to the moderate Free Syrian Army, the sources told Reuters. "Our Western friends made it clear in London that Assad cannot be allowed to go now because they think chaos and an Islamist militant takeover would ensue," said one senior member of the Coalition who is close to officials from Saudi Arabia.
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The shift in Western priorities, particularly the United States and Britain, from removing Assad towards combating Islamist militants is causing divisions within international powers backing the nearly three-year-old revolt, according to diplomats and senior members of the coalition. Like U.S. President Barack Obama's rejection of air strikes against Syria in September after he accused Assad's forces of using poison gas, such a diplomatic compromise on a transition could narrow Western differences with Russia, which has blocked United Nations action against Assad, but also widen a gap in approach with the rebels' allies in the Middle East. The civil war pits Assad and many Alawites, backed by Iran and its Shi'ite Muslim allies, against Sunni Muslim rebels supported by Turkey, Libya and Sunni Gulf Arab states. Unlike in Libya in 2011, the West has ruled out military intervention, leaving militant Islamists including al Qaeda affiliates to emerge as the most formidable rebel force, raising alarm among Washington and its allies that Syria, which borders Israel and Iraq, has become a centre for global jihad.
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Also signalling differences with Washington, opposition activists in Syria have said that Turkey has let a weapons consignment cross into Syria to the Islamic Front, the rebel group that overran the Bab al-Hawa border crossing last week, seizing arms and Western equipment supplied to non-Islamists.
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First Obama told the world that Assad's resignation was non-negotiable. The number killed should now be somewhere around 120-130 thousand, with millions of refugees and winter descending on them, producing a humanitarian crisis. Obama got caught trying to pull of a false flag chemical attack with the Saudis' Jihadists so the missile strikes didn't happen. Hillary's Army reacted by defecting to the Jihadists. Now Obama decides that Assad should stay in power after all that. Are we dizzy yet? This is what a military defeat looks like from the loser's side.Obama with his tail between his legs in full retreat. No doubt the Russians will come up with some face-saving way for Obama to try to spin his defeat as a victory.