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| In this photo taken Oct. 10, 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta speaks at NATO headquarters in Brussels. The US has sent troops to Jordan to bolster its military capabilities in the event Syria's civil war escalates, Panetta said Wednesday, reflecting U.S. concerns about the conflict spilling over allies' borders and about the security of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. Speaking at a NATO conference of defense ministers, Panetta said the U.S. has been working with Jordan to monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria and also to help Jordan deal with refugees pouring over the border from Syria. |
BRUSSELS (AP)
-- The United States has sent troops to Jordan to bolster its military
capabilities in the event Syria's civil war escalates, U.S. Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday, reflecting U.S. concerns about
the conflict spilling over allies' borders and about the security of
Syria's chemical weapons arsenal.
Speaking at a
NATO conference of defense ministers, Panetta said the U.S. has been
working with Jordan to monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in
Syria and also to help Jordan deal with refugees pouring over the border
from Syria.
About 150 U.S. troops, largely
Army special operations forces, are working out of a military center
near Amman, two senior defense officials said on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the mission.
The troops have moved back and forth to the Syrian border as part of
their work, which is joint planning and intelligence gathering, one
official said.
The revelation of U.S. military
personnel so close to the 19-month-old Syrian conflict suggests an
escalation in the U.S. involvement in the conflict, even as the Obama
administration pushes back on any suggestion of a direct intervention in
Syria.
News of the U.S. mission to Jordan
also follows several days of shelling between Turkey and Syria, an
indication that the civil war could become a regional conflict. One of
the U.S. defense officials said the extra planning is aimed at avoiding
those kinds of clashes between Jordan and Syria.
The
development comes with the U.S. presidential election less than a month
away, as Republican nominee Mitt Romney criticizes President Barack
Obama for weak leadership in foreign policy. Romney has said he would
send U.S. troops into Syria if needed to prevent the spread of chemical
weapons, while Obama has said that movement or use of chemical weapons
would have "enormous consequences."
Panetta
has said that while the U.S. believes the weapons are still secure,
intelligence suggests the regime might have moved some to protect them.
Syria
is believed to have one of the world's largest chemical weapons
programs, and the Assad regime has said it might use the weapons against
external threats, though not against Syrians. 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.
Jordan's King
Abdullah II fears such weapons could go to the al-Qaida terror network
or other militants, primarily the Iranian-allied Lebanese Hezbollah - a
vocal critic of Jordan's longstanding alliance with the United States.
The
Monterey, Calif.-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
provided a map purporting to show four Syrian production sites for
chemical weapons, three for storage, one for research and development,
and two with dual use infrastructure.
Steven
Bucci, an expert in chemical weapons at the Heritage Foundation, has
told Congress there might be as many as 50 chemical weapons sites. He
said in an interview Wednesday that Syria's stockpile is potentially
"like a gift from God" for militants since they don't have the know-how
to assemble such weapons, while some of Syria's chemical agents are
believed to have already been fitted into missile warheads.
Pentagon
press secretary George Little, traveling with Panetta, said the U.S.
and Jordan agreed that "increased cooperation and more detailed planning
are necessary in order to respond to the severe consequences of the
Assad regime's brutality."
He said the U.S.
has provided medical kits, water tanks and other forms of humanitarian
aid to help Jordanians assist Syrian refugees fleeing into their
country.
"We have a group of our forces there
working to help build a headquarters there and to insure that we make
the relationship between the United States and Jordan a strong one so
that we can deal with all the possible consequences of what's happening
in Syria," Panetta said.
In Jordan, the
biggest problem at the moment seems to be the strain put on the
country's meager resources by the estimated 200,000 Syrian refugees who
have flooded across the border - the largest number fleeing to any
country.
Several dozen refugees in Jordan
rioted in their desert border camp of Zaatari earlier this month,
destroying tents and medicine and leaving scores of refugee families out
in the night cold.
Jordanian men also are
moving the other way across the border, joining what intelligence
officials have estimated to be around 2,000 foreigners fighting
alongside Syrian rebels trying to topple Assad. A Jordanian border guard
was wounded after armed men - believed trying to go fight - exchanged
gunfire at the northern frontier.
Turkey has
reinforced its border with artillery and deployed more fighter jets to
an air base close to the border region after an errant Syrian mortar
shell killed five people in a Turkish border town last week and Turkey
retaliated with artillery strikes.
Turkey's
military chief, Gen. Necdet Ozel, vowed Wednesday to respond with more
force to any further shelling from Syria, keeping up the pressure on its
southern neighbor a day after NATO said it stood ready to defend
Turkey.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of
the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington on Wednesday that the
Pentagon was planning for "a number of contingencies" and was prepared
to provide the administration with options on Syria, if needed.
"But
the military instrument of power at this point is not the prominent
instrument of power that should be applied in Syria," he said.
