Hillary warns Assad over chemical arms

Turkey's PM Erdogan speaks with Russia's President Putin in Istanbul yesterday, right, a Turk holds a placard that reads "Bloody Assad associate in guilt with Putin" and sporting defaced images of Putin and Assad.Photo: AFP

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday issued a "strong warning" to the regime of Bashar al-Assad over the potential use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people.
"This is a red line for the United States," Clinton said after meeting Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg in Prague. "Once again we issue a very strong warning to the Assad regime that their behaviour is reprehensible. Their actions against their own people have been tragic," she added.
"I'm not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people, but sufficing to say that we're certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur," the top US diplomat stressed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul yesterday on a trip focused on resolving sharp differences over the near 21-month conflict raging in Syria.
Protesters chanted anti-Putin slogans outside Erdogan's office and another demonstration was staged outside the Russian consulate in Istanbul before the two leaders began their meeting.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the Russian strongman will raise with Erdogan the planned deployment by Nato of Patriot missiles along Turkey's volatile border with Syria, the Interfax news agency reported.
The missile deployment "worries Russia and does not facilitate stability of the already fragile situation" in the region, Peskov said.
Turkey insists the US-made Patriots would be used for purely defensive purposes but Russia has warned that such a move could spark a broader conflict that would draw in the Western military alliance.
Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime is in danger of collapse "anytime" as the opposition gains ground on the military and political fronts, Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi told AFP on Monday.
"That could happen anytime," the secretary general said in an exclusive interview.
"Now they are fighting in Damascus," and after 20 months of violence, "I think there will be something soon," he said.
"Facts on the ground indicate very clearly now that the Syrian opposition is gaining, politically and militarily. Every day they are gaining something," Arabi said.
He said a new coalition of Syrian opposition groups now based in Cairo was "moving ahead."
The Arab League, which is also based in the Egyptian capital, last month recognised Syria's National Coalition as the "legitimate" representative of the Syrian opposition.