Excerpts: Turkey knows where all Syria missiles located. Egypt's army tanks
deployed. Iranian opposition seeks Syria-style recognition December 06, 2012
+++SOURCE: Saudi Gazette 6 Dec.’12:”Turkey knows ‘where all Syria missiles
located”

“No asylum for Assad”, Report by Agencies

SUBJECT: Turkey knows Syrian missile location

QUOTE:”Turkish Foreign Minister said …that Ankara knows the ‘exact location’
of hundreds of ground missiles belonging to the regime of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad”

ANKARA — Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in remarks published
Wednesday(5 Dec.] that Ankara knows the “exact location” of hundreds of
ground missiles belonging to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

“Assad has about 700 missiles... Now we know the exact location of all of
them, how they are stored and who holds them,” Davutoglu was quoted as
saying by the Sabah newspaper.

The comments emerged the day after NATO ministers approved Turkey’s request
for deployment of Patriot missiles along its volatile border with Syria, a
move that has angered Damascus and its allies.

Davutoglu said the international community feared possible attacks from
Damascus against countries such as Turkey which were pushing for the
toppling of the regime, if it felt the end was near.

“We say to anyone who would want to attack Turkey — don’t even think about
it,” NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in announcing the alliance’s
decision on the Patriots, a US-made ground to air system.

The number of missile batteries and their precise location have yet to be
decided and will be determined after a site survey in Turkey and
consultations within NATO.

Syria reportedly has several types of ballistic missiles, including
Russian-made Scuds.

Turkey requested the Patriots out of concern for “possible action by
uncontrolled groups in Syria,” Davutoglu said without elaborating.

Turkey has said the missiles would be for “purely defensive purposes” after
several cross-border shelling attacks from Syria, where the 21-month old
conflict killed more than 41,000 people according to rights groups.

Turkey, a NATO member hostile to Assad and hosting thousands of refugees,
says it needs the air defense batteries to shoot down any missiles that
might be fired across its border. The German, Dutch and US troops would take
weeks to deploy.

NATO ministers meeting in Brussels also unanimously expressed “grave
concern” about US intelligence reports suggesting Syria might use chemical
weapons as a last resort to protect Assad, Secretary-General Anders Fogh
Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen and officials from a number of Western countries have warned this
week that any use of chemical weapons by Syria would prompt an international
response. Syria says it would never use chemical weapons on its own people.

Warplanes on Wednesday[5 Dec.] pounded suburbs of Damascus as regime forces
fought to reclaim rebel-held areas of the capital, the Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based watchdog, which uses a countrywide network of activists
and doctors to compile its tolls, said at least 123 people were killed on
Tuesday, including some 30 in and around Damascus.

Damascus has now become the focus of clashes.

Gunmen loyal to opposite sides battled on Wednesday[5 Dec.] in the streets
of a northern Lebanese city where two days of fighting killed at least five
people and wounded 45, officials said.

The Lebanese army fanned out in the city of Tripoli to calm the fighting,
with soldiers patrolling the streets in armored personnel carriers and
manning checkpoints. Authorities closed major roads because of sniper fire.

The fighting comes at a time of deep uncertainty in Syria, with rebels
closing in on President Bashar Assad’s seat of power in Damascus.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday[5 Dec.] urged Syria’s regime
against using its stockpile of chemical weapons, warning of “huge
consequences” if Assad resorts to such weapons of mass destruction.

“I again urge in the strongest possible terms that they must not consider
using this kind of deadly weapons of mass destruction,” Ban told The
Associated Press, speaking on the sidelines of a climate conference in
Qatar.

Syria has been careful not to confirm that it has chemical weapons, but the
regime insists it would never use them against the Syrian people.

Ban also suggested that he would not favor an asylum deal for the Syrian
leader as a way to end the country’s civil war and cautioned that the United
Nations doesn’t allow anyone “impunity.” Assad has vowed to “live and die”
in Syria, but as the violence grinds on there is speculation that he might
seek asylum. — Agencies

+++SOURCE: Naharnet 6 Dec.’12:Egypt Deploys Tanks Outside Presidential
Palace”, Agence France Presse
SUBJECT: Egypt’s army tanks deployed

QUOTE:” ‘It’s a civil war that will burn all of us’ “

FULL TEXT:Egypt's army deployed tanks outside the presidential palace on
Thursday[6 Dec.] after five demonstrators died overnight in clashes between
supporters and opponents of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Morsi was expected to issue a statement on Thursday[6 Dec.] to address the
worst violence since his June election, which has pitted Islamists against
an opposition that has escalated protests since he assumed extensive powers
on November 22.

Running street battles that carried on through the night outside the
Itihadiya palace in northern Cairo also left 350 people wounded, many from
buckshot, the official MENA news agency reported.

The opposition has said it would organize further marches to the palace as a
top presidential aide accused them of coordinating with loyalists of deposed
dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi is expected to "reveal that facts and call for a dialogue," the head
of his office Refaa Al-Tahtawy told the official Al-Akbar newspaper.

The stage was set for Wednesday's[5 Dec.] violence when Morsi's Muslim
Brotherhood movement announced a march to the palace, where opposition
protesters were staging a sit-in a day after tens of thousands surrounded
the sprawling complex.

The protesters threw fire bombs and rocks at each other on Wednesday[5 Dec.]
as their simmering stand-off over the president's expanded powers and a
draft constitution turned violent.

Bloodied protesters were seen carried away as gunshots rang out and the
rivals torched cars and set off fire crackers near the palace, where
opponents of Morsi had set up tents before his supporters drove them away.

Riot police were eventually sent in to break up the violence, but clashes
still took place in side streets near the palace in the upscale neighborhood
of Heliopolis.

The opposition says it will not stand down until Morsi discards his new
powers, which allow him to take decisions uncontested by courts, and cancel
a snap December 15 referendum on a new constitution opposed by liberals and
Christians.

In the early hours of Thursday[6 Dec.], gunshots rang out intermittently and
sporadic violence continued, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Later in the morning, a few hundred Morsi supporters remained outside the
palace. The opposition protesters had left the scene.

The overnight violence had also spread beyond the capital, with protesters
torching the offices of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood in the Mediterranean
port city of Ismailiya and in Suez, witnesses said.

Sobhi Saleh, a Brotherhood official and member of the constituent
assembly -- the body that drafted the controversial charter -- was attacked
and beaten by opposition protesters in the northern city of Alexandria, MENA
reported.

The Brotherhood urged protesters on both sides to withdraw, as did Prime
Minister Hisham Qandil.

"It's a civil war that will burn all of us," said Ahmed Fahmy, 27, as the
clashes raged behind him.

"They (Islamists) attacked us, broke up our tents, and I was beaten up,"
said Eman Ahmed, 47. "They accused us of being traitors."

Activists among the Islamist marchers harassed television news crews, trying
to prevent them from working, AFP reporters said.

Wael Ali, a 40-year-old Morsi supporter with a long beard, said: "I'm here
to defend democracy. The president was elected by the ballot box."

The United States called for an open and "democratic dialogue".

"The upheaval we are seeing... indicates that dialogue is urgently needed.
It needs to be two-way," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in
comments echoed by Britain and the European Union.

Despite the protests , Vice President Mahmoud Mekki said a referendum on the
charter "will go ahead on time" as planned on December 15.

The opposition would be allowed to put any objections they have to articles
of the draft constitution in writing, to be discussed by a parliament yet to
be elected.

Prominent opposition leader and former United Nations nuclear watchdog chief
Mohamed ElBaradei said Morsi bore "full responsibility" for the violence.

He said the opposition was ready for dialogue but they would use "any means
necessary" to scupper the charter, but stressed that these would be
peaceful.

Meanwhile, three of Morsi's advisers resigned over the crisis, MENA
reported, naming Amr al-Laythi, Seif Abdel Fattah and Ayman al-Sayyad

+++SOURCE: Jordan Times 6 Dec.’12:”Iranian opposition seeks Syria-Style
recognition”, Agence France Presse
SUBJECT: Iranian opposition seeks Syria-style recognition
QUOTE: “ ‘The only solution in Iran is a change of regime by the Iranian
people’(NCRI) “
FULL TEXT:PARIS — Iran’s exiled opposition on Wednesday[5 Dec.] launched a
campaign to have France and the European Union grant it the same recognition
they have accorded to the Syrian coalition battling to overthrow Bashar Al
Assad.

“The West’s biggest political error has been to ignore the key movement for
change in Iran,” said Maryam Rajavi, the president of the National Council
of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

“International sanctions against Iran have been positive but they will only
be effective if the West changes policy towards the resistance. The only
solution in Iran is a change of regime by the Iranian people.”

Rajavi was speaking at France’s National Assembly, where a group of 10
deputies from across the political spectrum has launched a petition calling
on the government to recognise the Iranian resistance.

France was the first Western power to recognise Syria’s opposition coalition
as the “sole” representatives of the Syrian people. The European Union and
the United States have upgraded its status to “legitimate representatives”.

The People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK), also led by Rajavi, is the largest
component of the NCRI.

The United States decided in September to revoke the MEK’s designation as a
terrorist organisation in a move seen as paving the way for closer
cooperation on action against the Islamist government in Iran.
==========
Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA