WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House and
its allies are weighing military options to secure Syria's
chemical and biological weapons, after U.S. intelligence
reports show the Syrian regime may be readying those weapons
and may be desperate enough to use them, U.S. officials said
Monday.
President Barack Obama, in a speech at
the National Defense University on Monday, pointedly warned
Syrian President Bashar Assad not to use his arsenal.
"Today I want to make it absolutely
clear to Assad and those under his command: The world is
watching," Obama said. "The use of chemical weapons is and
would be totally unacceptable. And if you make the tragic
mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences
and you will be held accountable."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton, in Prague for meetings with Czech officials, said
she wouldn't outline any specifics.
"But suffice it to say, we are
certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were
to occur," Clinton said.
Options now being considered range
from aerial strikes to limited raids by regional forces to
secure the stockpiles, according to one current U.S.
official, and one former U.S. official, briefed on the
matter. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to discuss the issue
publicly.
The administration remains reluctant
to dispatch U.S. forces into Syria, but a U.S. special
operations training team is in neighboring Jordan, teaching
troops there how to safely secure such sites together with
other troops from the region, the officials said.
The warnings to Syria come after U.S.
intelligence detected signs the Syrian regime was moving the
chemical weapons components around within several of Syria's
chemical weapons sites in recent days, according to a senior
U.S. defense official and two U.S. officials speaking on
Monday. The activities involved movement within the sites,
rather than the transfer of components in or out of various
sites, two of the officials said.
But they were activities they had not
seen before, that bear further scrutiny, one said.
Another senior U.S. official described
it as "indications of preparations" for a possible use of
the chemical weapons. The U.S. still doesn't know whether
the regime is planning to use them, but the official says
there is greater concern because there is the sense that the
Assad regime is under greater pressure now.
The officials spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly
about intelligence matters.
U.S. intelligence officials also
intercepted one communication within the last six months
they believe was between Iran's infamous Quds Force, urging
Syrian regime members to use its supplies of toxic Sarin gas
against rebels and the civilians supporting them in the
besieged city of Homs, a former U.S. official said. That
report was not matched by other intelligence agencies, and
other intelligence officials have said Iran also does not
want the Syrians to use their chemical weapons.
The Assad regime insists it would not
use such weapons against Syrians, though it carefully does
not admit to having them. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs
said the government "would not use chemical weapons - if
there are any - against its own people under any
circumstances." The regime is party to the 1925 Geneva
Protocol banning chemical weapons in war.
The Syrian assurances did not placate
the White House.
"We are concerned that in an
increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation
of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be
considering the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian
people," said White House press secretary Jay Carney.
"Assad has killed so many of his
people, I just wouldn't be surprised if he turned these
weapons on them," added Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger,
the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, after
intelligence briefings Monday.
An administration official said the
trigger for U.S. action of some kind is the use of chemical
weapons, or movement with the intent to use them, or the
intent to provide them to a terrorist group like Hezbollah.
The U.S. is trying to determine whether the recent movement
detected in Syria falls into any of those categories, the
official said. The administration official was speaking on
condition of anonymity because this person was not
authorized to speak publicly about the issue.
Israeli officials have repeatedly
expressed concerns that Syrian chemical weapons could slip
into the hands of Hezbollah or other anti-Israel groups, or
even be fired toward Israel in an act of desperation by
Syria.
Syria has some 75 sites where weapons
are stored, but U.S. officials aren't sure they have tracked
down all the locations, and fear some stockpiles may have
already been moved. Syria is believed to have several
hundred ballistic surface-to-surface missiles capable of
carrying chemical warheads, plus several tons of material
stored in either large drums, or in artillery shells, which
become deadly once fired.
"In Syria, they have everything from
mustard agent, Sarin nerve gas, and some variant of the
nerve agent VX," according to James Quinlivan, a Rand Corp.
analyst who specializes in the elimination of weapons of
mass destruction.
A primary argument against sending in
U.S. ground troops is that whoever takes possession of the
chemical weapons will be responsible for destroying them, as
part of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. Destroying
Syria's stockpiles could cost hundreds of millions of
dollars, and take more than a decade, Quinlivan said.
Syria's arsenal is a particular threat
to the American allies, Turkey and Israel, and Obama singled
out the threat posed by the unconventional weapons earlier
this year as a potential cause for deeper U.S. involvement
in Syria's civil war. Up to now, the United States has
opposed military intervention or providing arms support to
Syria's rebels for fear of further militarizing a conflict
that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since
March 2011.
Activity has been detected at Syrian
weapons sites before.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in
late September the intelligence suggested the Syrian
government had moved some of its chemical weapons in order
to protect them. He said the U.S. believed that the main
sites remained secure.
Asked Monday if they were still
considered secure, Pentagon press secretary George Little
declined to comment about any intelligence related to the
weapons.
Senior lawmakers were notified last
week that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected activity
related to Syria's chemical and biological weapons, said a
U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of
anonymity to discuss the closed-door meetings. All
congressional committees with an interest in Syria, from the
intelligence to the armed services committees, are now being
kept informed.
"I can't comment on these reports, but
I have been very concerned for some time now about Syria's
stockpiles of chemical weapons and its stocks of advanced
conventional weapons like shoulder-launched anti-aircraft
missiles," said House intelligence committee Chairman Mike
Rogers, R-Mich.
"We are not doing enough to prepare
for the collapse of the Assad regime, and the dangerous
vacuum it will create. Use of chemical weapons by the Assad
regime would be an extremely serious escalation that would
demand decisive action from the rest of the world," he
added.
The U.S. and Jordan share the same
concern about Syria's chemical and biological weapons - that
they could fall into the wrong hands should the regime in
Syria collapse and lose control of them.
---
Associated Press writers Bradley
Klapper in Prague, Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Albert Aji
in Damascus and Matthew Lee, Lolita C. Baldor and Julie Pace
in Washington contributed to this report.