Egyptians pelt Clinton motorcade with tomatoes

By Arshad Mohammed and Marwa Awad

CAIRO (Reuters) - Protesters threw tomatoes and shoes at U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade on Sunday during her first visit to Egypt since the election of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

A tomato struck an Egyptian official in the face, and shoes and a water bottle landed near the armoured cars carrying Clinton's delegation in the port city of Alexandria.

A senior state department official said that neither Clinton nor her vehicle, which were around the corner from the incident, were struck by any of the projectiles.

Protesters chanted: "Monica, Monica", a reference to Former President Bill Clinton's extra-marital affair. Some chanted: "leave, Clinton", Egyptian security officials said.

It was not clear who the protesters were or what political affiliations they had. Protesters outside Clinton's hotel on Saturday night chanted anti-Islamist slogans, accusing the United States of backing the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power.

The assault on her motorcade came on a day Clinton spoke at the newly re-opened U.S. consulate in Alexandria, addressing accusations the United States, which had long supported former President Hosni Mubarak, of backing one faction or another in Egypt following his ouster last year.

"I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which of course we cannot," Clinton said.

Clinton also met the country's top general, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, on Sunday to discuss Egypt's turbulent democratic transition as the military wrestles for influence with the new president.

RIGHTS OF ALL

The meeting came a day after she met Mursi, whose powers were clipped by the military days before he took office.

Mursi fired back by reinstating the Islamist-dominated parliament that the army leadership had disbanded after a court declared it void, deepening the stand-off before the new leader even had time to form a government.

The result has been acute political uncertainty as the various power centres try to find a way to get along in a country that still has no permanent constitution, parliament or government more than a year after Mubarak's downfall.

In their hour-long meeting, Clinton and Tantawi discussed Egypt's political transition and the military's "ongoing dialogue with President Mursi," a U.S. official travelling with Clinton said in an email brief.

"Tantawi stressed that this is what Egyptians need most now - help getting the economy back on track," the official said.

Clinton "stressed the importance of protecting the rights of all Egyptians, including women and minorities".

The talks also touched on the increasingly lawless Sinai region and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Speaking after the meeting, Tantawi said the army respected the presidency but would not be deterred from its role of "protecting" Egypt.

"The armed forces and the army council respects legislative and executive authorities," he said in a speech to troops in the city of Ismailia. "The armed forces would not allow anyone to discourage it from its role in protecting Egypt and its people."

TIES STRAINED

Ties with the United States, which provides Egypt with an annual $1.3 billion in military aid, were strained this year when Egyptian judicial police raided the offices of several U.S.-backed non-governmental organisations on suspicion of illegal foreign funding and put several Americans on trial.

The spat ended when Egyptian authorities allowed the U.S. citizens and other foreign workers to leave the country.

During her speech, Clinton said: "When we talk about supporting democracy, we mean real democracy."

"To us real democracy means that every citizen has the right to live, work and worship as they choose, whether they are man or woman, Christian or Muslim."

"Real democracy means that no group or faction or leader can impose their will, their ideology, their religion, their desires on anyone else."

That was a message she is likely to have repeated in meetings on Sunday with women and Christians, both groups that fear their rights may be curtailed under a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government.

"She wanted, in very, very clear terms, particularly with the Christian group this morning, to dispel that notion and to make clear that only Egyptians can choose their leaders, that we have not supported any candidate, any party, and we will not," a senior U.S. official told reporters.

Clinton: Syria on brink of catastrophe as rebels advance. The region in danger

DEBKAfile Special Report

“There is still a chance to save the Syrian state from a catastrophic assault that would be very dangerous not only to Syria, but to the region,” said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Tokyo, Sunday, July 8. She did not elaborate, but stressed earlier, “… the opposition is getting more effective in defense of themselves and going on the offensive against the Syrian military.”

debkafile’s military sources note that her over-the-top language comes at a pivotal moment in the Syrian conflict: The rebels are winning more and more territory and not only encircling Damascus but fighting inside the capital. To save itself, the Assad regime which still controls the army outside Damascus may in desperation open up its arsenals and deploy weapons of mass destruction in a bid to drive off the rebels while also spreading the flames to other parts of the region, including Israel.

Persian Gulf sources reported Sunday that inside the capital, the Syrian army no longer moves troops in military convoys for fear of rebel attack. They now travel in unmarked civilian vehicles. Some officers prefer to stay on base for fear of assassination or kidnap on their way home.

Clinton did not explain how the rebels were suddenly able in the last few days to develop their ubiquitous capabilities, rising numbers and military organization - or where they procured weapons for their wholesale offensive against the Syrian army.

According to debkafile’s intelligence and military sources, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have substantially stepped up the flow of munitions to the rebels. They are reaching combatants inside Syria as well as the trainees at Turkish military facilities.

Their numbers have, furthermore, risen to 50,000 armed men who are efficiently organized in 17 brigades. Fighting inside the country are 260 military units, each consisting of one or two battalions, which mostly range from 1,000-1,500 men - depending on the arena. Some are brigades of 3,000 men.

By the first week of July, the rebel army had put in place an efficient logistical system:

1. The Free Syrian Army had been able to establish a geographical presence in all of Syria’s provinces, barring the minority regions (Kurds and Druzes) which are outside the conflict, and the pro-regime Alawite region.

2.  A regional operational command was working in all those provinces (260). It was equipped with hi-tech communications connecting the provinces and linked to the FSA’s high command in Turkey.

3.  A well-organized arms smuggling ring was transferring weapons from one command to another as required for local attacks on Syrian military and security forces. This pipeline is fed by Turkish, Saudi and Qatari suppliers via Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey..

4.  A foreign “military adviser” is posted at each provincial command center. They are usually special forces experts mainly from the British, French, Turkish, Saudi and Qatari armies.

Up until last month, the rebels were fighting primarily to sever a strategic strip of land from Idlib in the north to Deraa in the south in order to tie down the regime in Damascus and its Allawite loyalist forces in the west and center and cut it off from the rest of the country. 

This goal has now been abandoned. Today, the anti-Assad forces are concentrating on a single objective: The regime’s overthrow.

Clinton: Russia and China will 'pay price' for supporting Assad

Russia rejects in the strongest possible terms allegations that it supports President Assad in the Syrian conflict. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Moscow and Beijing must 'pay a price' for backing Assad.

“I do not believe that Russia and China are paying any price at all – nothing at all – for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime. The only way that will change is if every nation represented here directly and urgently makes it clear that Russia and China will pay a price,” Clinton warned.­

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the west is operating within a friend-or-foe framework that he called outmoded.

“We categorically reject that such a question would even be posed regarding the current situation in Syria and Russia’s ‘backing’ of President Bashar Assad. This is not a question of supporting certain political figures or leaders. This is a question of managing a crisis situation in the country within a normal political framework,” Ryabkov said.

“Unfortunately, we’re unable to get a basic understanding from our western partners. The west is still appealing to “friend-or-foe” terms. We considered such terminology to be a thing of the past,” Ryabkov explained.

Russia and China once again opted not to attend the “Friends of Syria” meeting. Neither Moscow nor Beijing believe the meeting in the French capital will be helpful in uniting the Syrian opposition “on a constructive basis”.

“We have frankly laid out the reasons why we have restrained from joining the mechanism, the very name of which has a contradiction between the word and the deed,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this week.

The US Secretary of State further criticized Russia for the maintenance of Syria’s Soviet-made helicopters. Two weeks ago Hillary Clinton lashed out at Russia for repairing three Syrian helicopters, saying their presence “will escalate the conflict quite dramatically.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry swiftly refuted the allegations.

“In 2008 there was a contract to repair them. They are still to be assembled after delivery'', Lavrov said. ''That entire process will take at least three months. So to speak about something we have just sold to Syria, which is then to be used in action, is not true at all,” he added.

Meanwhile, Kofi Annan called on the West and Russia to lay aside their differences and work towards a sooner end to the Syrian bloodshed, which according to the UN latest estimates, has taken some 15,000 lives.

"They [the West] accuse the Russians of arming the [Syrian] government. The Russians accuse them of arming the opposition and flooding the place with weapons. This is instead of coming together to see what can be done," Annan told the Guardian on Friday.

US to seek another UN Security Council resolution­

The Paris conference wrapped up with a six-point resolution, affirming that more definitive UN Security Council action is required to resolve the 16-month conflict in Syria.

Hillary Clinton said the lack of compliance with Annan’s peace plan or obstruction to the transition should be punished with further sanctions.

"We should go back and ask for a resolution in the Security Council that imposes real and immediate consequences for non-compliance, including sanctions," ranging from economic measures to military force, she said.

Two previous UNSC resolutions have been vetoed by China and Russia.

Friends of Syria’s meeting also concluded with an agreement that the Syrian opposition should receive broader support, while those “who carry out and support repression” must face tougher and wider sanctions.

In the meeting, French President Francois Hollande demanded Assad step down. The Syrian opposition also called for humanitarian corridors and a no-fly zone to be implemented.

The Friends of Syria gathering comes just a week after a UN-led summit in Geneva where the international community endeavored to reach a consensus on the conflict. They agreed to get behind UN envoy Kofi Annan’s plan for a transition government in Syria.

However, Russia said that western powers were purposely distorting the terms of the agreement to push for the removal of Assad.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that the agreement said Assad must leave office, whereas Moscow claims that the original accord made no allusion to the removal of the Syrian president.

After 8,763 soldiers killed and a stream of defectors, Assad still thinks he can win

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

In its 17-month crackdown on dissent, the Syrian army had by early July, lost 8,763 dead and 21,357 wounded. Some units lost a quarter of their manpower. Around 600 tanks and APCs – six percent of the Syrian armored corps fleet – were crippled. Around 200 can be fixed but repairs will take three months.

Defections from all ranks up to general are depleting combat divisions. All in all, the Syrian army has never been hit with this scale of casualties and losses. Yet Bashar Assad and his ruling family, some members of whom hold high military, security and intelligence command, show no cracks or fear of impending failure.

Just the reverse: President Assad boasted to the Turkish Hurriyet in a recent interview that were it not for the majority support he enjoys from the Syrian people he would have fallen like the Persian Shah in 1979.

The Syrian ruler is generally unfazed by the stream of high officers defecting to the rebels because, as debkafile reported on July 2 – he has quietly made a clean sweep of long-serving elite commanders, especially Sunnis, and replaced them with younger Alawite officers, drawn from security and intelligence agencies and the loyal, exceptionally brutal Alawite Shabiha militia.

Some of the defectors are generals who were quietly retired on full pay; others, mid-ranking officers who see their prospects of promotion vanishing in the incoming surge of young Alawite officers awarded top jobs.

The latest high-ranking defector, Brig.-Gen. Manaf Tlass, 105th Brigade commander of the Republic Guard belongs to the second category, debkafile’s intelligences disclose. His desertion is potentially a lot more damaging to the regime –politically rather than militarily.

He did not abscond to rebel ranks in Turkey as the Syrian opposition reported Friday, July 6, but headed for Paris to join his father, Gen. Mustafa Tlass, former Syrian Defense Minister who served Bashar Assad and his father for 40 years, and his daughter Nahed Ojjeh, widow of the leading Saudi arms dealer Akkram Ojjeh.

Both have good connections around the Arab world and are close to the Russian ruling elite in Moscow.

Mustafa Tlass left Syria five months ago over a conflict of loyalties: The prominent Sunni Tlass clan spearheaded the anti- Assad revolt in Rastan, a town near Homs. To avoid taking sides, Tass senior decamped.

His son, Brig.-Gen. Manaf, served in the Republic Guard defending the presidential place on Mount Qasioun, the nerve center of Assad’s vicious campaign to suppress dissent. As a member of the presidential inner circle, he was certainly part of the military establishment running that campaign.

Indeed, Assad rewarded his loyalty by letting him keep his job, only putting his promotion to general on hold.

Manaf, realizing his career prospects as a Sunni had been overtaken by the advancing Allawitization of the top Syrian command, decided to join his father.

According to our sources, he actually flew out of Damascus on June 26, not this week as widely reported.

From their new base in Paris, the heads of the Tlass clan have yet to decide which way to jump – whether to make use of their excellent connections in Moscow or join up with the pro-Western “Friends of Syria” Western-Arab group whose latest meeting in Paris, Friday, July 6, was chaired by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Assad regime would suffer a serious setback if the Tlasses opted for the West and its Arab enemies.

US diplomats are therefore going out of their way to rope them in. They have turned to Firas Tlass, the powerful Syrian clan’s Dubai-based “finance minister,” for help. Above all, they are going to great lengths to dissuade these prominent Sunnis from gravitating toward their old ties in Moscow.

Russia accuses US of arming Syrian rebels

By AFP

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday accused the United States of supplying weapons to Syria's rebels after Hillary Clinton said Moscow was supplying the Assad regime with "attack helicopters".

Russia was supplying "anti-air defence systems" to Damascus in a deal that "in no way violates international laws," Lavrov told a news conference during a brief visit to Iran.

"That contrasts with what the United States is doing with the opposition, which is providing arms to the Syrian opposition which are being used against the Syrian government," he said, in remarks translated from Russian into Farsi by an official interpreter.

It was the first time Moscow has directly pointed the finger at Washington. Previously, it had said unidentified "foreign powers" were arming Syria's opposition.

Lavrov's accusation followed a charge by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday that she had information Russia was sending to Syria "attack helicopters ... which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically."

Asked in Tehran about the helicopter allegation, Lavrov said only that Moscow was giving Damascus "conventional weapons" related to air defence and asserted that the deal complied with international law.

Russia's deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters last month that Moscow believed "it would be wrong to leave the Syrian government without the means for self-defence."

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said at the same news conference with Lavrov that Tehran and Moscow were "very close" on the Syria issue.

Western and Arab nations, he said, "are sending weapons to Syria and forces to Syria, and are not allowing the reforms promised by the Syrian president to be applied."

Reports in Iran allege that Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States are arming Syria's rebels – termed "terrorists" by Damascus – while US officials claim Iran is giving arms and military advisers to Syria's regime.

Some observers fear the conflict, which the UN's chief peacekeeper agrees now resembles a civil war, could blow up into a struggle between forces helped by outside nations.

"There is a real risk of it sliding into a proxy war as certain states support the regime or 'the opposition'," one Western diplomat told AFP, speaking on condition on anonymity.

"The conflict in Syria certainly appears to be getting more brutal – and not just on one side," the diplomat warned.

Monitors say at least 14,100 people have been killed in the 15-month uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia came under fierce criticism from Western and Arab countries for vetoing two UN Security Council resolutions that would have sanctioned Assad for his use of force.

Since then, it has sought to distance itself from Assad while continuing to support his regime. "We do not support any individual or government, we support the people of Syria," Lavrov said.

Moscow is now trying to organise an international conference on Syria that would include several nations with influence over the conflict, including Iran. The United States, Britain and France, though, object to Iran taking part.

"We want the support of all the players," Lavrov said.

"All sides in the conflict need to stop operations ... Any player with leverage should apply pressure to stop the violence and facilitate negotiations," he said.

Al Qaeda Offshoot Offers Camels for Obama's Head, Hens for Hillary Clinton's

By MOHAMED IBRAHIM

The al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia has mocked the new $33 million bounty on its top leaders heads by offering its own bounty for President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – 10 camels for Obama and 20 chickens for Clinton.

"Anyone who helps the Mujahideen find the whereabouts of Obama and Hillary Clinton will be rewarded with 10 Camels to the information leading to Obama and 10 hens and 10 cocks for Hillary," said senior Shabaab commander Fuad Mohamed Khalaf in a statement reported on numerous websites.

Earlier this week, the U.S. offered a total of $33 million through the State Department's Rewards for Justice program for information leading to the capture of seven different Shabaab leaders, including Khalaf.

The U.S. offered $7 million for founder and commander Ahmed Abdi Aw-Mohamed, AKA Godane or Mukhtar Abu Zubeir, five million for Khalaf and three other men, and $3 million apiece for two other leaders.

The announcement of the U.S. bounties came as Somali and other African military forces have begun to squeeze Shabaab into a smaller and smaller section of Somalia. In a statement, the Somali government said the rewards would help crush the al Qaeda affiliate.

"The announcement from the U.S. government . . . will certainly help the Somali government's efforts to end al Qaeda's reign of terror in Somalia," said Somalia's transitional government in a statement Thursday. "This is an important juncture in Somali history, where the possibility of full recovery from years of chaos is within reach."

In his response to the U.S. rewards, Khalaf said that "infidels" offering bounties for Muslims was "nothing new."

"There is nothing new in the fact that infidels pay to have Muslim leaders killed," said Khalaf. "They already did that by offering camels for the head of Prophet Mohammed, and the dollar is the camel of today."

Khalaf was referencing a passage in the Koran in which 100 camels were offered for the Prophet Mohammed as he fled Mecca for Medina.

"I can assure you that these kind of things will never dissuade us from continuing the holy war against them," said Khalaf.