Bill Van Auken

US President Barack Obama said he was considering a "limited"
intervention in Syria. The legitimacy of the move, however, is
difficult as most nations reject unilateral intervention. (dw.de)

Having failed to advance regime-change in Syria through two rounds of talks in Geneva, the Obama administration is stepping up its funding and arming of Islamist and mercenary militias fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. And once again, Washington is turning toward direct military intervention.

In what marks a sharp escalation of the US-backed war for regime-change, the Saudi monarchy is shipping more sophisticated weaponry, including shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, to the so-called “rebels,” while the US itself is paying salaries to an entire “rebel” front in southern Syria near the Jordanian border.

The offer of the new weapons came at a January 30 meeting in Amman, Jordan between “rebels” and agents of both US and Saudi intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing unnamed diplomats and “opposition figures.”

“At the meeting, US and Gulf officials said they were disappointed with the Syrian government’s refusal to discuss Mr. Assad’s ouster at the talks and suggested a military push was needed to force a political solution to the three-year war,” the Journal reported.

The aim is apparently to arm and organize an offensive to seize control of the southern suburbs of Damascus in order to subject the capital to military attack and force the ouster of Assad.

Stephen Lendman

Washington manipulated Syrian peace talks deadlock. Obama abhors peace. He wants war. He didn't launch it to quit. He wants Assad forcibly ousted. Ending conflict defeats his objective. It continues. Two rounds of peace talk pretense accomplished nothing. They ended as expected. What's next remains to be seen.

UN/Arab League Syrian intermediary Lakhdar Brahimi represents Washington. He did little to prevent deadlock. His apology rang hollow, saying:

"I am very, very sorry, and I apologize to the Syrian people...(W)e haven't helped them very much." [Second round talks were] "as laborious as all the meetings we have had, but we agreed on an agenda for the next round when it does take place."

His proposed agenda would focus first on ending violence, he said. Creating transitional governance would follow. He lied explaining deadlock, saying: "Unfortunately, the government has refused" his proposal...(It) raises the suspicion of the opposition that (it) doesn't want to discuss" transition.

False! Syrian delegates want international law observed. It's fundamental. It's inviolable. Interior Minister Mohammad al-Shaar said no outside force will dictate policy. Syrians alone will choose their government. They'll decide who'll lead them. Foreign interference is prohibited. More on this below.

Finian Cunningham

A man attacks an alleged ex seleka rebel arrested by French
soldiers in Bangui, on December 9, 2013. French troops had
begun disarming fighters in the Central African Republic
after a swell in sectarian violence a week earlier. (Fred Dufour)

As the Central African Republic descends into a charnel house of mass killing, hunger and fleeing refugees, one country bears full responsibility for the catastrophe - France.

This week, France's defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had the brass neck to tour the former French colony where hundreds of people - mainly Muslims - have been lynched in the streets in recent weeks, their corpses left to rot along the roadsides.

Thousands more have been burnt out of their homes and have fled to the jungles for refuge from inter-communal clashes. A Muslim man happened to fall off a truck ferrying refugees from the violence. He was then beaten, hacked to death by a frenzied mob on the street below.

An entire country has been turned upside down, and that chaos and suffering is all down to French imperialist meddling.

Le Drian had the nerve to claim that the dispatch of French troops to the Central African Republic in early December "had prevented even more deaths from occurring". How dare the French minister distort the facts and exonerate his country from the cold-blooded mass murder and an unfolding humanitarian crisis that it - and it alone - has triggered.

The upsurge in killings in the CAR's capital, Bangui, and the surrounding countryside began promptly on December 5. This was three days after France began sending hundreds of its soldiers to that country, supposedly with the remit of "humanitarian protection".

It was only after France dispatched its troops to this country that the United Nations Security Council - railroaded by French diplomats - authorized the intervention with a mandate. The French military intervention is therefore illegal and its hastiness reveals what the hidden agenda for French meddling in Central Africa is really all about.