Europe end Arms embargo for Syrian rebels as the war to control of Europe's natural gas supply ses another chess move ....Europe check to Russia

Martin Chulov explains that the US has put its faith in Salam Idriss, the commander of the Free Syrian Army, as someone who can be trusted to be supplied with weapons via Saudi Arabia:

A reluctant US administration has lately settled on Salam Idriss, the commander of the umbrella guerilla group, the Free Syria Army, as a leader in whom it is prepared to take a risk. Dealings between Idriss and the US military have stepped up in recent months, both in Jordan and Turkey, where small groups of Syrian rebels are being trained.

An influx of Saudi supplied weapons that crossed the Jordanian border earlier this year were channelled through vetted Idriss loyalists. The supply included explosives that can take out tanks and cause extensive damage to structures as rebels advance. But it did not include the holy grail of heat seekers [shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles].

The BBC has more from Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov on Moscow's decision to press ahead with the supply of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to the Syrian government:

We consider these supplies a stabilising factor and believe such steps will deter some hotheads from considering scenarios that would turn the conflict international with the involvement of outside forces.

Russia's envoy to Nato, Aleksandr Grushko, said Moscow was acting "fully within the framework of international law":

We are not doing anything that could change the situation in Syria. The arms that we supply are defensive weapons.

Ryabkov said the contract for the missiles had been signed years ago.

A Syrian TV correspondent was killed covering the fighting near Qusair yesterday.

Yara Abbas, who worked for the state-owned Al-Ikhbariyah TV, was attacked by rebels who ambushed the car carrying her and her crew, the Syrian information ministry said. A cameraman and his assistant were wounded, according to the report. AFP reported that she was 26.

An image grab taken from Syrian state TV shows Yara Abbas, who was killed reporting on the army's assault on Qusair. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Summary

Good morning and welcome to the Middle East live blog. We'll have live coverage of developments from the region throughout the day.

Syria

• The EU arms embargo on Syria will not be renewed, meaning Britain and France can supply arms to the Syrian opposition from 1 August. London and Paris were the only capitals of 27 EU countries that backed letting the embargo lapse this Friday, UK foreign secretary William Hague arguing that the mere threat of arms would force Bashar al-Assad to the negotiations. But the other EU countries – despite worries the arms would fall into the hands of Islamist rebels such as Jabhat al-Nusra – assented, to preserve a semblance of unified policy, since the refusal of Britain and France to go along with the arms embargo could have caused the collapse of all EU sanctions against Syria. The August start date was decided upon to give the EU time to gauge what might happen at the peace talks in Geneva mooted for next month, although there is no certainty they will take place or who will attend. All the other parts of the Syrian embargo were retained apart from the arms embargo on the rebels.

• Austria was a strong opponent of letting the embargo lapse, and foreign minister Michael Spindelegger said that Vienna would now have to reconsider its deployment on a long-running UN peacekeeping mission in the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel.Vienna has said in the past it might have to pull its 380 soldiers out if the arms embargo was eased.

• Medics working in six rebel-held districts near Damascus have treated several hundred fighters for symptoms of chemical exposure since March, a detailed investigation has found, adding fresh impetus to claims the Syrian regime has resorted to the banned weapons. France is testing samples of suspected chemical weapon elements used against Syrian rebel fighters and smuggled out by reporters from Le Monde and will divulge the results in the next few days, a senior French official said.

• The battle for Qusair near the border with Lebanon continued to rage on Monday, with Hezbollah forces advancing slowly from the south, but continuing to take heavy casualties. Officials close to the Islamic Dawa party in Lebanon suggested to Lebanese media that between 79-110 Hezbollah militants had been killed in Qusair in the past eight days.

• Some 96 people were killed across Syria yesterday, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group.The group said 30 of those were killed in Homs, and 28 in Damascus and its surrounding areas. The Local Co-ordination Committees, another activist group, said 89 people had been killed, including 27 in Damascus and 27 in Homs. These accounts cannot be verified because media access to Syria is limited.

• A British doctor who left his home, family and job in the UK to help civilians wounded by the conflict in Syria has died after the makeshift hospital he was working in was shelled. Dr Isa Abdur Rahman, 26, was working as a volunteer in the north-western city of Idlib with the British charity Hand in Hand for Syria (HIHS) when the facility was attacked.

• Hawkish US senator John McCain met rebel leaders inside Syria to discuss their calls for heavy weapons and a no-fly zone to help them topple Assad and bring the bitter civil war to a conclusion. The Arizona senator has been leading efforts in Congress in recent weeks to force Barack Obama to intervene in Syria following reports of alleged chemical weapons use by forces loyal to Assad.

and....

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-27/europe-ends-arms-embargo-syrian-rebels-desperate-break-russian-natgas-export-monopol

Europe Ends Arms Embargo For Syrian Rebels, Desperate To Break Russian NatGas Export Monopoly

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/27/2013 18:28 -0400

• China
 
• Crude
 
• Crude Oil
 
• France
 
• headlines
• Kazakhstan
 
• Nat Gas
 
• Natural Gas
 
• Norway
 
• Saudi Arabia
 
• Turkey

Moments ago, the British foreign secretary William Hague tweeted that the arms embargo to the Syrian rebels has officially ended:

William Hague        ✔ @WilliamJHague

Right EU decision tonight. Arms embargo on Syrian opposition ended. No immediate decision to send arms. Other sanctions remain

5:48 PM - 27 May 2013

Sky has more:

 Britain and France had pushed for the ban on supplying the opposition forces fighting Bashar al Assad's regime to be lifted and the failure of ministers to agree an extension to the embargo during 12 hours of talks means it will now end on June 1.

Mr Hague said after the meeting Monday that the decision "sends a very strong message from Europe to the Assad regime".

Sky's foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall said the decision would make little difference in the short-term.

"Already there are many sides arming the two sides that are fighting. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are pouring arms into the opposition," he said.

"What it means though, firstly, is that the idea of the united European foreign policy has bitten the dust.

"I suspect at some point, the British and the French will go ahead and try to arm some of the many, many group there are in opposition in Syria."

Diplomats said there had been an agreement that EU governments would refrain from sending an arms to Syria for now.

Financial and economic sanctions against the Assad government were extended for another year at the meeting.

Several of the 27 EU nations were reticent about more weapons being sent into a conflict zone that has already seen the deaths of nearly 100,000 people.

Others were not at all reticent about aiding and abbeting the murder of countless more by Qatari mercenaries.

The irony is that as has been known for a long time, and as the FT itself reported ten days ago, the Syrian "rebels" who actually have been Qatari mercenaries, have been receiving weapons shipments for years from the wealthy Persian Gulf country, with the implicit knowledge of both Europe and the US.

So why the rush by France and Britain to allow weapons armaments to resume by official channels, even if it means even more weaponization of the Assad regime by Russia and China, more bloodshed, and more death?

Simple: natural gas.

Recall that as we explained a week ago the whole point of the Syrian escalation is to provide a land route for Qatari natural gas pipelines to enter Turkey, and from there to proceed into Europe.

So there you have it: Qatar doing everything it can to promote bloodshed, death and destruction by using not Syrian rebels, but mercenaries: professional citizens who are paid handsomely to fight and kill members of the elected regime (unpopular as it may be), for what? So that the unimaginably rich emirs of Qatar can get even richer. Although it is not as if Russia is blameless: all it wants is to preserve its own strategic leverage over Europe by being the biggest external provider of natgas to the continent through its own pipelines. Should Nabucco come into existence, Gazpromia would be very, very angry and make far less money!

For this to happen, Syria would have to be controlled by pro-Western forces: most probably some spin off of the "Muslim Brotherhood" paradigm last seen in the western takeover of the strategically critical Suez Canal, and the far less important country surrounding it.

Needless to say, such optically noble considerations as the people's "liberation" or "ushering a new age of democracy" are not only irrelevant but completely meaningless and hypocritical in the scramble for European energy independence from Russia. But they sure make for great front page headlines.

In the meantime, here are the facts:

The origin of EU-27 energy imports has changed somewhat in recent years, as Russia has maintained its position as the main supplier of crude oil and natural gas and emerged as the leading supplier of hard coal (see Table 3). In 2010, some 34.5 % of the EU-27’s imports of crude oil were from Russia; this was the highest share recorded between 2002 and 2010 having fallen to a temporary low of 31.4 % in 2008.

The security of the EU’s primary energy supplies may be threatened if a high proportion of imports are concentrated among relatively few partners. Close to three quarters (74.4 %) of the EU-27’s imports of natural gas in 2010 came from Russia, Norway or Algeria – as such there was a diversification of imports as in 2009 the same three countries accounted for 79.2 % of natural gas imports. A similar analysis shows that 58.5 % of EU-27 crude oil imports came from Russia, Norway and Libya, while 64.3 % of hard coal imports were from Russia, Colombia and the United States. Although their import volumes remain relatively small, there was some evidence of new partner countries emerging between 2002 and 2010. This was notably the case for crude oil imports from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, or natural gas imports from Qatar and Libya.

In short: the great chess game involving the isolation of Russian natgas export dominance to its key trading "partner", Europe, goes on.

How Gazpromia Russia responds next - as the threat that it may no longer be the monopoly supplier of marginal nat gas to an energy-starved Europe becomes increasingly more palpable - is all that matters.