US Army Command delegation ‘to arrive in Kiev this week’
RT | January 19, 2015
Representatives of the US Army Command will arrive in Ukraine in the coming days, Ukrainian military announced. The visit comes as the Kiev forces have launched a large-scale offensive on the militia positions in the south-east of the country.
“This week, a delegation from the US Army Command, headed by Commander of US Army Europe, Lt. Gen [Frederick Ben] Hodges, will arrive in Ukraine,” Vladislav Seleznyov, spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff of Armed Forces, said at a media briefing in Kiev on Monday.
The spokesman also said that Ukraine will take part in the NATO Military Committee conference on January 20-22.
The get-together will be dedicated to the issues of military cooperation between Ukraine and NATO as well as plans to reform the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the evaluation of the situation in south-eastern Ukraine, he said.
Previously, the Society of Assistance to Defense of Ukraine announced that it has already begun training military specialists in line with NATO programs.
“At our military centers, about 100 people per week are being prepared in line with the accelerated NATO weekly program in military professions such as gunner, machine gunner and others,” Yury Chizhmar, the Society’s head, said, as cited by TASS news agency.
The fighting intensified in south-eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Kiev forces launched a large-scale offensive, reportedly involving Grad multiple rocket launchers and aviation, against the militia in the Donetsk region.
According to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic count, at least nine civilians were killed and 44 injured as the city endured some 50 artillery strikes from the Ukrainian military on Sunday.
There were also human casualties and destruction in the nearby towns of Makeevka and Gorlovka.
Earlier, in a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry urged Kiev to take steps to pull its heavy weapons out of Eastern Ukraine, saying that their militia opponents had already signed a roadmap for it.
An arms pullout is a key point in the so-called Minsk agreement, a roadmap to deescalating the situation. However it was never fully implemented after the Russia and OSCE-brokered deal between the government in Kiev and their opponents was penned in September 2014.
“If Kiev truly prepared to pull back heavy weapons as would the militia do… this should lead to practical steps on the ground, especially considering that the leaders of [the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics] have already signed a roadmap for it,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday.
The Ukrainian military launched the operation in the country’s southeast last April, after the Donetsk and Lugansk regions became the site of a rebel movement refusing to recognize the new, coup-imposed authorities in Kiev.
The death toll in the Ukrainian conflict has exceeded 4,800. Over 10,000 have been injured, according to UN estimations.
READ MORE: Kiev’s new offensive in Donbass may lead to irreversible consequences – Moscow
Charlie Hebdo, Zionism & Media Deception – Interview with Hafsa Kara-Mustapha
Brandon Martinez interviews Hafsa Kara-Mustapha on a January 18, 2015 episode of the Non-Aligned Media Podcast.
Hafsa Kara-Mustapha is a London-based journalist and political commentator who has written extensively about the Middle East for publications such as Middle East Magazine, Jane’s Foreign Report and El Watan newspaper. She also appears frequently on Press TV and Russia Today.
Brandon Martinez is an independent writer and journalist from Canada who specializes in foreign policy issues, international affairs and 20th and 21st century history. For years he has written on Zionism, Israel-Palestine, American and Canadian foreign policy, war, terrorism and deception in media and politics. Listeners can contact him at martinezperspective[at]hotmail.com or visit his blog.
The Danger of an MH-17 ‘Cold Case’
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | January 19, 2015
Now more than six months after the shoot-down of a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine, the refusal of the Obama administration to make public what intelligence evidence it has about who was responsible has created fertile ground for conspiracy theories to take root while reducing hopes for holding the guilty parties accountable.
Given the U.S. government’s surveillance capabilities – from satellite and aerial photographs to telephonic and electronic intercepts to human sources – American intelligence surely has a good idea what happened on July 17, 2014, when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine killing all 298 people onboard.
I’m told that President Barack Obama has received briefings on what this evidence shows and what U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded about the likely guilty parties — and that Obama may have shared some of those confidential findings with the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak when they met on Dec. 24 in Hawaii.
But the U.S. government has gone largely silent on the subject after its initial rush to judgment pointing fingers at ethnic Russian rebels for allegedly firing the missile and at the Russian government for supposedly supplying a sophisticated Buk anti-aircraft battery capable of bringing down the aircraft at 33,000 feet.
Since that early flurry of unverified charges, only snippets of U.S. and NATO intelligence findings have reached the public – and last October’s interim Dutch investigative report on the cause of the crash indicated that Western governments had not shared crucial information.
The Dutch Safety Board’s interim report answered few questions, beyond confirming that MH-17 apparently was destroyed by “high-velocity objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside.” Other key questions went begging, such as what to make of the Russian military radar purporting to show a Ukrainian SU-25 jetfighter in the area, a claim that the Kiev government denied.
Either the Russian radar showed the presence of a jetfighter “gaining height” as it closed to within three to five kilometers of the passenger plane – as the Russians claimed in a July 21 press conference – or it didn’t. The Kiev authorities insisted that they had no military aircraft in the area at the time.
But the 34-page Dutch report was silent on the jetfighter question, although noting that the investigators had received Air Traffic Control “surveillance data from the Russian Federation.” The report also was silent on the “dog-not-barking” issue of whether the U.S. government had satellite surveillance that revealed exactly where the supposed ground-to-air missile was launched and who may have fired it.
The Obama administration has asserted knowledge about those facts, but the U.S. government has withheld satellite photos and other intelligence information that could presumably corroborate the charge. Curiously, too, the Dutch report said the investigation received “satellite imagery taken in the days after the occurrence.” Obviously, the more relevant images in assessing blame would be aerial photography in the days and hours before the crash.
In mid-July, eastern Ukraine was a high priority for U.S. intelligence and a Buk missile battery is a large system that should have been easily picked up by U.S. aerial reconnaissance. The four missiles in a battery are each about 16-feet-long and would have to be hauled around by a truck and then put in position to fire.
The Dutch report’s reference to only post-crash satellite photos was also curious because the Russian military released a number of satellite images purporting to show Ukrainian government Buk missile systems north of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk before the attack, including two batteries that purportedly were shifted 50 kilometers south of Donetsk on July 17, the day of the crash, and then removed by July 18.
Russian Claims
Russian Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov called on the Ukrainian government to explain the movements of its Buk systems and why Kiev’s Kupol-M19S18 radars, which coordinate the flight of Buk missiles, showed increased activity leading up to the July 17 shoot-down.
The Ukrainian government countered these questions by asserting that it had “evidence that the missile which struck the plane was fired by terrorists, who received arms and specialists from the Russian Federation,” according to Andrey Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s Security Council, using Kiev’s preferred term for the rebels.
Lysenko added: “To disown this tragedy, [Russian officials] are drawing a lot of pictures and maps. We will explore any photos and other plans produced by the Russian side.” But Ukrainian authorities have failed to address the Russian evidence except through broad denials.
On July 29, amid escalating rhetoric against Russia from U.S. government officials and the Western news media, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity called on President Obama to release what evidence the U.S. government had on the shoot-down, including satellite imagery.
“As intelligence professionals we are embarrassed by the unprofessional use of partial intelligence information,” the group wrote. “As Americans, we find ourselves hoping that, if you indeed have more conclusive evidence, you will find a way to make it public without further delay. In charging Russia with being directly or indirectly responsible, Secretary of State John Kerry has been particularly definitive. Not so the evidence. His statements seem premature and bear earmarks of an attempt to ‘poison the jury pool.’”
However, the Obama administration failed to make public any intelligence information that would back up its earlier suppositions. In early August, I was told that some U.S. intelligence analysts had begun shifting away from the original scenario blaming the rebels and Russia to one focused more on the possibility that extremist elements of the Ukrainian government were responsible.
A source who was briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that they had found no evidence that the Russian government had given the rebels a BUK missile system. Thus, these analysts concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appeared Ukrainian government forces were to blame, although apparently a unit operating outside the direct command of Ukraine’s top officials.
The source specifically said the U.S. intelligence evidence did not implicate Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko or Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk but rather suggested an extremist element of the armed forces funded by one of Ukraine’s oligarchs. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Flight 17 Shoot-down Scenario Shifts”and “Was Putin Targeted for Mid-air Assassination?”]
But then chatter about U.S. intelligence information on the shoot-down faded away. When I recently re-contacted the source who had been briefed by these analysts, the source said their thinking had not changed, except that they believed the missile may have been less sophisticated than a Buk, possibly an SA-6.
What was less clear was whether these analysts represented a consensus view within the U.S. intelligence community or whether they spoke for one position in an ongoing debate. The source also said President Obama was resisting going public with the U.S. intelligence information about the shoot-down because he didn’t feel it was ironclad.
A Dangerous Void
But that void has left the debate over whodunit vulnerable to claims by self-interested parties and self-appointed experts, including some who derive their conclusions from social media on the Internet, so-called “public-source investigators.” The Obama administration also hasn’t retracted the early declarations by Secretary Kerry implicating the rebels and Russia.
Just days after the crash, Kerry went on all five Sunday talk shows fingering Russia and the rebels and citing evidence provided by the Ukrainian government through social media. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” David Gregory asked, “Are you bottom-lining here that Russia provided the weapon?”
Kerry: “There’s a story today confirming that, but we have not within the Administration made a determination. But it’s pretty clear when – there’s a build-up of extraordinary circumstantial evidence. I’m a former prosecutor. I’ve tried cases on circumstantial evidence; it’s powerful here.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Kerry’s Latest Reckless Rush to Judgment.”]
But some U.S. intelligence analysts soon offered conflicting assessments. After Kerry’s TV round-robin, the Los Angeles Times reported on a U.S. intelligence briefing given to several mainstream U.S. news outlets. The story said, “U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 [a Buk anti-aircraft missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mystery of a Ukrainian ‘Defector.’”]
In October, Der Spiegel reported that the German intelligence service, the BND, had concluded that Russia was not the source of the missile battery – that it had been captured from a Ukrainian military base – but still blaming the rebels for firing it. The BND also concluded that photos supplied by the Ukrainian government about the MH-17 tragedy “have been manipulated,” Der Spiegel reported.
And, the BND disputed Russian government claims that a Ukrainian fighter jet had been flying close to MH-17 just before it crashed, the magazine said, reporting on the BND’s briefing to a parliamentary committee on Oct. 8, which included satellite images and other photography. But none of the BND’s evidence was made public — and I was subsequently told by a European official that the evidence was not as conclusive as the magazine article depicted. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Germans Clear Russia in MH-17 Case.”]
So, it appears that there have been significant disagreements within Western intelligence circles about precisely who was to blame. But the refusal of the Obama administration and its NATO allies to lay their evidence on the table has not only opened the door to conspiracy theories, it has threatened to turn this tragedy into a cold case with the guilty parties – whoever they are – having more time to cover their tracks and disappear.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
World’s Richest 1 Percent to Own Half of Global Wealth by 2016: Oxfam
Al-Akhbar | January 19, 2015
The world’s wealthiest 1 percent are expected to own more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth by 2016, the UK-based charity Oxfam International reported Monday.
“The richest people in the world have seen their share of global wealth increase to 48 percent in 2014 from 44 per cent in 2009,” Oxfam said in the 12-page report entitled “Wealth: Having it all, and wanting more.”
The average wealth per adult in this group is $2.7 million (2.3 million euros), Oxfam said.
“At this rate, it will be more than 50 percent in 2016,” the report read.
The majority of the remaining 52 percent of global wealth shared between the other 99 percent is owned by the richest 20 percent, leaving just 5.5 percent for the remaining 80 percent of people in the world — the equivalent of $3,851 (3,330 euros) per adult.
“Do we really want to live in a world where the 1 percent own more than the rest of us combined? The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering,” Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International, warned.
In 2010, the richest 80 people in the world had a net wealth of $1.3 trillion, according to the report. By 2014, the 80 people who top the Forbes rich list had a collective wealth of $1.9 trillion, an increase of $600 billion in just 4 years.
Byanyima said failure to tackle inequality will set the fight against poverty back decades.
“The poor are hurt twice by rising inequality — they get a smaller share of the economic pie and because extreme inequality hurts growth, there is less pie to be shared around.”
Economists say extreme income inequality has consequences for economic growth and on development.
“Income inequality has a negative and statistically significant impact on subsequent growth. In particular, what matters most is the gap between low income households and the rest of the population,” economist Federico Cingano wrote in a study published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in June 2014.
Rising inequality is estimated to have knocked more than 10 percentage points off growth in Mexico and New Zealand. In the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and Norway, the growth rate would have been more than one fifth higher had income disparities not widened, the study shows.
“On the other hand, greater equality helped increase GDP per capita in Spain, France and Ireland prior to the crisis,” Cingano wrote.
It also has an effect on human capital: “Increased income disparities depress skills development among individuals with poorer parental education backgrounds, both in terms of the quantity of education attained (e.g. years of schooling), and in terms of its quality (i.e. skill proficiency),” Cingano said.
Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz agreed.
“The extreme inequalities in incomes and assets we see in much of the world today harms our economies, our societies, and undermines our politics. Whilst we should all worry about this it is of course the poorest who suffer most, experiencing not just vastly unequal outcomes in their lives, but vastly unequal opportunities too,” Stiglitz said on Oxfam’s website.
Oxfam called upon states to tackle tax evasion, improve public services, tax capital rather than labor, and introduce living minimum wages, among other measures, in a bid to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth.
The consequences of policies to reduce income inequality could be significant, the Oxfam report said. If India stopped inequality from rising, 90 million more men and women could be lifted out of extreme poverty by 2019, according to the report.
(Anadolu, Al-Akhbar, AFP)
Scottish First Minister leads united call for Iraq war report disclosure
RT | January 19, 2015
Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon has called for a united political movement to demand the immediate publication of the Chilcot Inquiry report into the legality of the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Sturgeon has written to other Scottish party leaders, urging them to unite in favor of immediate publication.
The Chilcot Inquiry, which was set up in 2009 and is expected to cost the taxpayer over £10 million, has come under fire in recent months due to delays in its publication.
The disclosure of secret documents, and disagreements over whether private communications between former leaders Tony Blair and George W. Bush should be made public, has disrupted the progress of the inquiry.
There are now fears that unless the report is published immediately, its release could affect the results of the general election in May.
The leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Jim Murphy, and the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Willie Rennie, have also said they support the earliest possible release of the document.
The House of Commons will debate the release of the findings on January 29.
Last month there was speculation that Tony Blair may face prosecution for war crimes as a result of the report’s findings. Blair said he “resented” claims he was responsible for the delays.
The debate surrounding the release of classified material had presented a large obstacle to the publication of the report, but it was decided in June last year that the “gist” of conversations between Blair and Bush could be published.
Sturgeon said it would be impossible to have a national election without the report’s findings being presented.
“Surely we can’t go through a general election without people having the answers to the questions on the Iraq war that they still don’t have,” she told the BBC.
“That has to happen before some of these MPs that voted for the Iraq war are back up for election.”
Murphy responded to Sturgeon’s call for action, saying it was essential for future governments to learn from the results.
“The Chilcot Inquiry is a crucially important piece of work that must be conducted thoroughly and forensically,” he said. “The inquiry was initiated by Labour in July 2009, because it is vital to identify the lessons that can be learned from the conflict.”
“There is rightly real public interest in the findings of such an important inquiry and I think it is right that there is the earliest possible publication of the report.”
Rennie also expressed his eagerness for the report to be published, saying he agreed with the SNP’s Sturgeon.
“We agree with Nicola Sturgeon. It is important that the lessons learnt from the Chilcot report are learnt whilst there are people involved in Parliament who are in a position to answer for their actions.”
A spokeswoman for the Iraq Inquiry said: “We will not be commenting further on the process or the progress of the report.”
READ MORE:
Cameron has final word on release date of Iraq war report – Downing Street
Theresa May Performs The Pre Traumatic Stress
By Gilad Atzmon | January 19, 2015
In The Wandering Who I wrote, “within the condition of the Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the stress is the outcome of a phantasmic event, an imaginary episode set in the future; an event that has never taken place. Unlike the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in which stress comes as the direct reaction to an event that (may) have taken place in the past, within the state of Pre-TSD, the stress is the clearly the outcome of an imaginary potential event… If it is taken to extremes, even an agenda of total war against the rest of the world is not an unthinkable reaction…”
The Daily Mail Reports today:
‘Without its Jews, Britain would not be Britain,’ warns Theresa May over fears of an exodus in wake of anti-Semitic attacks.
- Home Secretary never thought she would see the day Jews wanted to flee
- She vows to redouble efforts to wipe out anti-Semitism in the UK
- Eric Pickles says Jewish community is part of what makes Britain tick
- Board of Deputies hails demonstration of the government’s solidarity
- Scotland Yard have promised extra police patrols in Jewish areas
- It comes after gun attack on a Paris kosher supermarket killed four
Needless to mention, that Theresa May’s comments are based on a fear of a future (imaginary) attack on British Jews.
Wouldn’t it be better if, for instance, our mother Theresa were advising British Jews to disassociate themselves from the Jewish State and its militancy? Such an act could save British Jews a lot of trouble. Theresa May could also suggest to her Tory MP friends to drift away from the Conservative Friends Of Israel club (CFI). At the moment 80% of our Conservative MPs are friends of Tel Aviv, it is not clear how many of them are friendly with Glasgow or Liverpool.
EU appeals court ruling removing Hamas from terror list
MEMO | January 19, 2015
The European Union decided Monday to appeal a court ruling that says Hamas must be removed from the EU’s list of terrorist organisations, officials said.
The General Court of the European Union ruled Dec.17 that listing Hamas on the 2001 terrorist list was “not based on acts examined and confirmed in decisions of competent authorities, but on factual imputations derived from the press and the Internet.”
However, the European Council, composed of representatives of the 28 EU member states, decided to challenge the court’s ruling.
”This ruling was clearly based on procedural grounds and did not imply any assessment by the court of the merits of designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a press release.
”As a result of the appeal, the effects of the judgement are suspended until a final judgement is rendered by the Court of Justice,” Mogherini said.
In December 2001, the European Council adopted a terrorist list requiring the freezing of the funds of the people and entities listed.
Iran’s IRGC confirms killing of its general in Syria’s Golan
Press TV – January 19, 2015
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) confirms the killing of one of its generals in an Israeli airstrike on the occupied Golan Heights in Syria that also killed six members of the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah.
“A number of fighters and forces of the Islamic Resistance along with Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi were visiting the region of Quneitra and were attacked by a military helicopter of the Zionist regime,” the IRGC said in a statement on its website on Monday.
“This brave general and some members of Hezbollah were martyred as a result of this crime,” it added.
It said Allahdadi had traveled to Syria to provide consultation and help the Syrian government and nation counter the Takfiri and Salafi terrorists in the war-stricken country.
He gave “decisive” consultation about ways to stop and thwart the Israeli regime’s plots and crimes, it added.
The statement emphasized that the killing of the IRGC general and Hezbollah fighters would strengthen the movement’s determination to fight the Israeli regime.
“The Zionist regime’s criminal move to violate Syria’s airspace once again showed that the terrorist plot of the ISIL and Takfiri groups has been hatched in line with policies of the arrogant and Zionist system and in coordination with leaders of the White House and the occupying regime of al-Quds against the Muslim community,” the IRGC said.
They are not committed to any international regulations and human and moral principles to achieve their evil goals, it pointed out.
Jihad Mughniyeh funeral procession
Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Monday held a funeral procession for Jihad Mughniyeh in southern Beirut. Massive crowds took part in the event.
Jihad was among six Hezbollah fighters killed in Israel’s missile strike on Syria’s Golan Heights. He was the son of Hezbollah’s slain military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in an Israeli-orchestrated bombing back in 2008.
Painful response
A source close to the Lebanon’s Hezbollah says the movement’s response to Israel’s deadly attack on members of the resistance would be “painful.”
“The attack against six Hezbollah members will have a painful and unexpected response, but it can be assumed that it will be controlled to prevent an all-out war,” the sources told the Lebanese As-Safir Arabic political daily on Monday.
A serious mistake
The Syrian information minister has slammed as a “serious mistake” the recent Israeli airstrike on the southwestern strategic Syrian city of Quneitra.
“Israel has made a serious mistake when it attacked on Syrian soil today,” Omran al-Zoubi said in an interview with Lebanese al-Manar TV on Sunday.
Al-Zoubi said the airstrikes proved the Tel Aviv regime was cooperating with terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front.
The Syrian minister said that Israel needs the terrorist groups to act as a “buffer zone” that separates it from the Syrian army and people.
Whoever fights the Syrian people and army is putting himself in the service of the Zionist project against Syria, Palestine and the Arab nation, he added.
Iran’s condemnation
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has strongly condemned the killing of six fighters of Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah by Israel, Press TV reports.
“We condemn all actions of the Zionist regime as well as all acts of terror,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Press TV early on Monday, lashing out at Israel for committing acts of terrorism.
Zarif further censured the acts of terrorism against the people of Lebanon and the resistance movement, saying that “this has been a practice followed for a very long time,” the top Iranian diplomat noted. “The policy of state terrorism is a known policy of the Zionist regime,” he added.
Hezbollah statement
Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah confirmed the death of six fighters in the new Israeli airstrike on the southwestern strategic Syrian city of Quneitra.
In a statement issued on Sunday, Hezbollah said 25-year-old Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of slain Hezbollah top commander Imad Mughniyeh, and five other fighters lost their lives in the fresh Israeli aerial assault against Syria.
Hezbollah identified the other victims as Mohammad Issa,42, Abbas Ibrahim Hijazi, 35, Mohammad Ali Hasan Abu al-Hasan, 29, Ghazi Ali Dawi, 26, and Ali Hasan Ibrahim, 21.
The martyrs were reportedly on a field reconnaissance mission in Quneitra when an Israeli military helicopter targeted their vehicle.
Fresh Israeli aggression
On Sunday, an Israeli military helicopter fired two missiles into Amal Farms in the strategic southwestern city of Quneitra, close to line separating the Syrian part of the Golan Heights from the Israeli-occupied sector.
The Israeli military has so far declined comment on the attack.
Press TV reported that the Israeli military has gone on high alert for the fear of a possible Hezbollah response to the regime’s new act of aggression.
Analysts believe the new Israeli assault is yet another attempt by Tel Aviv to change the balance of war in favor of the Takfiri militants fighting against Syria.
The new Israeli aerial raid comes as Syrian soldiers, backed by Hezbollah resistance fighters, have made numerous gains against the militants operating in Quneitra.
The Tel Aviv regime has carried out several airstrikes in Syria since the start of the nearly four-year-old foreign-sponsored militancy there.
Damascus says Tel Aviv and its Western allies are aiding the extremist terror groups operating inside Syria since March 2011.
The Syrian army has repeatedly seized large quantities of Israeli-made weapons and advanced military equipment from the foreign-backed militants inside the Arab state.
Berri reaction
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has hit out at the Tel Aviv regime for disrupting stability in Lebanon.
“Every time we take steps forward in terms of achieving stability … Israel tries to create chaos,” local Lebanese media quoted Berri as saying on Monday.
“Israelis don’t want Lebanon to relax,” he said.
Lebanon’s al-Manar TV said later in the day that Tel Aviv is “playing with fire that puts the security of the whole Middle East on edge.