BEIRUT: US President Barack Obama is deciding whether to take new action to help Syria’s rebels, the White House said yesterday, while President Bashar Al Assad’s surging forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies turned their guns on the north.
Assad’s forces fought near the northern city of Aleppo yesterday and bombarded the central city of Homs, having seized the initiative by winning the open backing of Hezbollah last month and capturing the strategic town of Qusair last week.
The arrival of thousands of seasoned, Iran-backed Hezbollah Shia fighters to help Assad combat the mainly Sunni rebellion has shifted momentum in the two-year-old war, which the United Nations said yesterday has killed at least 93,000 people.
US and European officials anxious about the rapid change are meeting the commander of the main rebel fighting force, the Free Syrian Army, today in Turkey. FSA chief Salim Idriss is expected to plead urgently for more help.
Obama has come under mounting pressure in recent weeks from allies abroad and politicians at home to take more action to help the rebels as the balance of power tilts towards Assad. He has so far been more cautious than Britain and France, who have already forced the European Union this month to lift an embargo that had blocked weapons for the rebels.
“The president is reviewing and considering what other options are available to him and to the United States as well as our allies and partners for further and additional steps in Syria, and that process continues,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
“As terrible as the situation is in Syria, he has to make decisions when it comes to policy towards Syria that are in the best interests of the United States.”
Western governments that months ago predicted Assad would soon fall now believe that support from Tehran and Hezbollah are giving Assad the upper hand. However, they also worry that sending arms to rebel fighters could empower Sunni Islamist insurgents who have pledged their loyalty to Al Qaeda.
While Britain and France have yet to announce their own decisions to start arming the rebels, their diplomats have been making the case that the best way to counter both threats is to beef up support for Idriss’s mainstream rebel force. REUTERS
