Israel says Syria chemical weapons are secure for now

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Syria's chemical weapons are still secure despite the fact that President Bashar al-Assad has lost control of parts of the country, a senior Israeli defense official said on Sunday.

Amos Gilad told Army Radio that the civil war between Assad and opposition forces fighting to topple him had become deadlocked, but that the Syrian leader showed no signs of heeding international calls to step down.

"Suppose he (Assad) does leave, there could be chaos ... in the Middle East you never know who will come instead. We need to stay level-headed; the entire world is dealing with this. At the moment, chemical weapons are under control," Gilad said.

As Syria's southern neighbor, Israel has been concerned about chemical weapons falling into the hands of Islamist militants or Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, warning it could intervene to stop such developments.

Western countries said three weeks ago that Assad's government might be preparing to use poison gas to repel rebel fighters who are encamped around Damascus, the capital, and who control rural Aleppo and Idlib in the north.

"The opposition is not managing to defeat him and he is not defeating the opposition, though more and more parts of Syria are no longer under his control and that is what matters," Gilad said.

The rebels - mainly Sunni Muslims - are pushing southwards from their northern strongholds into the central province of Hama.

But Assad, who is from the Alawite minority linked to Shi'ite Islam, has responded with artillery, air strikes and, according to NATO, with Scud-type missiles.

Western powers and some Arab countries have called for Assad to step down, but Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that international efforts to persuade Assad to quit would fail.

Lavrov said Russia had rejected requests from countries in the region to pressure Assad to go or to offer him safe haven. If Assad did exit the political scene, it could lead to an upsurge in the fighting that activists say has killed 44,000 people since the uprising began in March 2011, Lavrov said.

(Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Andrew Osborn)

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Panetta says Syria chemical threat has slowed

KUWAIT CITY (AP) — The Syrian government seems to have slowed preparations for the possible use of chemical weapons against rebel targets, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday.

Last week, U.S. officials said there was evidence that Syrian forces had begun preparing sarin, a nerve agent, for possible use in bombs.

Speaking to reporters flying with him from Washington to Kuwait, Panetta suggested the threat was no longer escalating, although he was not specific about any Syrian military preparations.

"At this point the intelligence has really kind of leveled off," he said. "We haven't seen anything new indicating any aggressive steps to move forward in that way."

Panetta was in Kuwait to visit U.S. troops at the start of a four-day trip. The U.S. has about 13,500 troops in this country; they are a remnant of the 1991 Gulf War in which a U.S.-led coalition force evicted Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

Asked whether he believed Syrian President Bashar Assad was heeding Western warnings against using chemical weapons, Panetta said: "I like to believe he's got the message. We've made it pretty clear. Others have as well."

He noted that the Assad regime is coming under increasing pressure from rebel forces.

"Our concern is that if they feel like the regime is threatened with collapse, they might resort to these kinds of weapons," he said.

Syria is believed to have a formidable arsenal of chemical weapons, including sarin and mustard gas, although its exact dimensions are not known. Syria is not a signatory to the 1997 Convention on Chemical Weapons and thus is not obliged to permit international inspection.

In the interview with reporters on his flight from Washington, Panetta also said he expects Obama administration decisions in the next few weeks on what military missions and forces the U.S. will seek to keep in Afghanistan after its combat mission ends Dec. 31, 2014.

The U.S. now has about 66,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of an international coalition that has been fighting the Taliban for more than 11 years.

Panetta said he would consult further with Marine Gen. John Allen, the top coalition commander in Kabul, before making further recommendations to President Barack Obama on a post-2014 military presence.

Panetta also said he is encouraged by what he called a downward trend in the number of attacks on U.S. and coalition forces by their Afghan partners. These so-called insider attacks accelerated for much of 2012, threatening to disrupt the U.S.-Afghan military partnership.

Panetta said the number of such attacks fell from 12 in August to two in November.

"Steps that were put in place to try to deal with that threat I believe have been effective," he said. He did not mention specific steps, but they include more rigorous vetting of Afghan army and police recruits and a requirement that U.S. troops carry loaded weapons at all times, even when on coalition or Afghan bases.

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