Diplomats say UN nuclear inspectors failed to make progress on Syria probe (IAEA inspection)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/apnewsbreak-diplomats-say-un-nuke-inspectors-in-damascus-stymied-in-syria-probe/2011/10/28/gIQAFCeBQM_story.html?wprss=rss_world
2011.10.28
By Associated Press
VIENNA — Syrian officials have turned down a renewed request from U.N. nuclear inspectors to visit suspected secret nuclear sites during talks in Damascus described by diplomats Friday as failing to advance a probe of the Arab nation's hidden atomic program.
Meetings between Syrian and International Atomic Energy officials Monday and Tuesday had been highly anticipated after Damascus pledged to end more than three years of stonewalling IAEA inspectors. Since 2008 the agency has been stymied in attempts to seek more information over what the agency says was a clandestine nuclear program centered around a nearly completed reactor.
The offer for cooperation came after the IAEA's 35-nation board reported Damascus to the U.N. Security Council in June on the basis of an agency assessment that a facility destroyed by Israeli war planes in 2007 was a nuclear reactor meant to produce plutonium when completed.
Damascus says the target was a non-nuclear military building but has refused to allow IAEA officials to return to the site after an initial visit that produced samples with traces of uranium and other nuclear footprints.
It has also turned down agency requests to visit three other sites that the IAEA suspects are linked to what it describes as the destroyed reactor.
Officials at the IAEA have refused to comment on the trip, saying details will only be released to the board next month by IAEA chief Yukiya Amano. But diplomats from two IAEA member nations — who spoke to The Associated press on condition of anonymity because their information was privileged — said Friday that the trip had essentially been a failure.
Led by deputy IAEA Director General Herman Nackaerts, the U.N. delegation had asked for a return visit to the destroyed desert site at Dair Alzour, as well as access to the three other facilities that the agency suspects are connected to that site, said one of the diplomats.
They were turned down by the Syrians, who told them that they would present new evidence that the Dair Alzour site was non-nuclear, making any further on site inspections anywhere unnecessary, said one of the diplomats.
He said that the Syrian response was considered disappointing by the agency delegation because it was vague on what new information would be produced and contained no time line, indicating that the offer was nothing more but an attempt by Damascus to buy more time.
The U.N. Security Council met in closed session on July 14 to discuss the IAEA assessment that Syria had hidden a nuclear program and some Western ambassadors said afterward that the agency's report has raised concerns the country violated its nonproliferation obligations.
Pressure on Syria over its apparently secret nuclear activities has been compounded by international criticism sparked by President Bashar Assad's brutal repression of pro-democracy protesters. Syrian security forces opened fire Friday on protesters and hunted them down in house-to-house raids, killing about 30 people in the deadliest day in weeks in the country's 7-month-old uprising, activists said.
The IAEA resolution that reported Syria to the Security Council on June 9 expressed "serious concern" over "Syria's lack of cooperation with the IAEA Director General's repeated requests for access to additional information and locations as well as Syria's refusal to engage substantively with the Agency on the nature of the Dair Alzour site."
الخبير الفرنسي آلان كورفيز : إسرائيل تقــف وراء عمليـات تهريب السلاح إلـى سـورية
French expert Alain Korfez: Israel was behind the smuggling of arms to Syria
http://www.syrianow.sy/index.php?d=35&id=39247
Saturday 2011/10/29 SyriaNow
Maha Mohammed Mahfoud (Read original in Arabic, its cache)
French strategic expert Alain Korfez said that Israel was behind the smuggling of weapons to Syria, whether directly or by proxy pointing to the presence of armed gangs
And he said that in Syria most victims are civilians, the army and the maintenance of order and the West must recognize this fact.
The Korfez in an interview for «al-Thawrah» that despite the errors of a clear strategy committed by NATO, which represents France on the head spear seems that the United States and its allies have not learned their lessons from the rise of Islamic forces in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt without talking about the danger of those in Algeria and Morocco.
He added that the conspiracy hatched against Syria through peaceful demonstrators who were in the beginnings and the Western alliance funding and arming thousands of takfiris (religious extremists) who entered Syria.
He asked Korfez not these people realize that if the regime fell in Syria, the entire region Stanagad to chaos from Lebanon to Afghanistan through Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Satahedd stability in every corner of this region where the mosaic of ethnic, racial, and I think that Israel is aware that the danger threatening if left the scene around by the extremists.
What was difficult for President Sarkozy to hear the real message addressed to him by the Maronite Patriarch Bishara al-Ra'i in Paris when Sarkozy told him that Christians in the Middle East should emigrate to the West, and that the west is ready to receive them. al-Ra'i responded: Why do you not give President Assad the oppotunity, who decided and began to apply the momentum of democratic reforms is unprecedented in any Arab country and that the available area to go to the dialogue began with the radical opposition, but national.
That was the message of hope that Christians wanted to Syria and the Middle East to made it understood to the west that because they know exactly what awaits them in the event of chaos in Syria.
Korfez said President Assad began reforms with real re-drafting of the constitution in full during any period of four months drafting a new constitution as the text of Decree 33 issued on October 15 which will be put to popular vote. The Decree No. 100 issued on 4 August 2011 been authorized by the political parties and select the work in accordance with the provisions of the new constitution based on democratic principles that are excluded only on the basis of religious or sectarian, tribal or be supported from abroad.
The Decree 101, he put the law on general elections, with the formation of a higher committee for elections, its mission to ensure the transparency of the election, at the end of last August was 107 and 108 resolutions on press freedom and decentralization of administrative power.
He had many of the opposition parties have expressed satisfaction, noting that these reforms will take into account the structural changes undergone by Syria.
A French expert we know full well that democracy and happiness Syrians are not the main concern for NATO but the decision taken in Washington allows all possible means to overthrow the regime in Syria, including the alliance with the Islamists, this alliance, which I thought America since the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, it is able to move when created Osama bin Laden and trained and funded Islamic schools in Pakistan to send them later to the other side of the border to fight the Soviets, what we want to understand: France reaped any benefit from the regime change in Syria? ..
Syria's ancient history and heritage long and with which France cultural relations distinct in 2009, offers more than a hundred thousand Syrian student for the certification exam Baccalaureate and the French language a compulsory subject in the testing of as the first foreign language in the stages of education, is no stranger to the visitor in Damascus to hear people talking French restaurants, for example, do we think for a moment if the Islamists rose to power with French help to where things will go?
He pointed out that in the time that Sarkozy's government launched its campaign against Syria, and some German companies signed contracts with Syria was a French company hopes such as the contract signed with Siemens for example.
Not only did Sarkozy, but this increased in the melody mandolins while opponents said the Syrians welcomed thousands of immigrants flow to us in confidence from Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and the Syrians and Kurds claim that they oppose.
He added that if Syrian opposition, real opposition, it has to be aware of what the armed groups in Syria is not only terrorism but the persecution of the Muslim religion, not ambitious of democracy and freedom.
He pointed out that there are official in the Lebanese intelligence confirmed that the 17,000 Islamist fighters who have been groomed in Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan entered Syria, and we know very well how to launch these fierce battles in Nahr al-Bared against the Lebanese Army, also a Lebanese press estimated that 1.5 million pieces of weapons entered the Syria recently suspected that Israel is one of the organized smuggling operations.
He has been President al-Assad before the events began opening the economy and the administrator so the dialogue committed with the national opposition will lead to the ambitions of the same, we have to let this man open to the world time and means to lead this difficult task to an end and will do so for the good of his country as it is for the good of the region all of them.
He added that Syria's geopolitical and based on its territory the refugees Palestinians, Iraqis and porous borders, even Nuri al-Maliki needs Syria in the order of the internal situation of Iraq.
If the West, which boasts the value of democracy really wants the success of the Syrian people will not be claiming that the army shoots at demonstrators, but to recognize that the number of victims in most of them are the forces of order and the army, and to stop inciting and encouraging terrorist attacks on the army and the police, there is no room to get out of the crisis, but to encourage dialogue between the authorities and the opposition honest to put things in perspective and walk in the path of reform.
النائب الأول لوزير الخارجية الروسي: استمرار وثبات الموقف الروسي الداعم لسورية في المجالات كافة
First Deputy Russian Foreign Minister: the continued stability of the Russian position in support of Syria in all fields
http://www.sana.sy/ara/3/2011/10/29/378414.htm
October 29, .2011
Moscow - SANA
Reviewed by Dr. Faisal Miqdad Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants and Andrei Denisov, First Deputy Russian Foreign Minister during the session of talks at the political headquarters of the Russian Foreign Ministry said yesterday the latest developments on the regional and international arenas that concern the two countries.
And Dr. Miqdad an update on the Syrian arena, including the package of political reforms that have been taken to pointing out the positive and friendly atmosphere that accompanied the meeting President Bashar al-Assad with the Arab Ministerial Committee on Syria.
Denisov stressed the continued stability of the Russian position in support of Syria in all fields, noting the reform steps undertaken by the Syrian leadership.
The two sides noted the importance of continuing dialogue and regular consultations between the two countries to serve the security and stability in the region and the world, stressing their keenness to activate and strengthen the cooperation relations between them, leading to the establishment of a network of strategic relationships in the economic field in particular and other aspects in general.
The session was attended by the Russian side, Mikhail Bogdanov, Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Dzasokhov, Adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Prime Friendship Society Russian-Syrian and Vladimir Doshchin chief adviser of the Middle East and North Africa and the Syrian side, Ghassan al-Nasir Director of Europe Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants and Riad Haddad, Syria's Ambassador in Moscow.
Russian govt official Margelov sees Arab League's view on Syria constructive
http://en.ria.ru/world/20111029/168252154.html
© RIA Novosti. Oleg Lastochkin
21:50 29/10/2011
A position of the Arab League, which calls upon Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stop killing civilians, is rather constructive and may lead to end of bloodshed in the country, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia's Federation Council Mikhail Margelov said on Saturday.
Mass media has reported, citing human rights groups, that at least 44 people were killed in a crackdown on anti-government protest in Syria on Friday. The Syrian government did not confirm the data.
The League of Arab States had sent a letter to the Syrian authorities calling upon them to stop using force against demonstrators and to protect civilians.
"The Arab League considers that the Syrian government and opposition forces can find a compromise. It is a constructive point of view and its implementation may stop bloodshed," Margelov told RIA Novosti.
Syria's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday it was wondered that the league made a statement on events in Syria, relying on news sources instead of asking the country's government for explanations.
Syria has been rocked with protests against al-Assad's regime for seven months. The authorities have used force to quash the riots and the UN says 3,000 people have died. The government says the death toll is half that.
Margelov also said that current power methods of the Syrian authorities hamper implementation of reforms, which seem inevitable.
"Their methods give base to criticize President al-Assad and make grounds ... for new sanctions and country's isolation," he also said.
"النمساوية" توقف رحلاتها إلى سوريا
"Austrian Airlines" stop flights to Syria
http://www.aksalser.com/index.php?page=view_news&id=746c160217f32b27c74dab388723b971&ar=229666503
Saturday - October 29 - 2011 - 14:35:51
An official source in the Austrian Airlines stop flights to Syria from November 18 until next March 28, 2012, for commercial reasons."
The source told the German Press Agency (d. B. A) Saturday in Damascus, the justification to stop the main due to commercial reasons, first, especially with the low numbers of travelers to Syria and the tourism sector was hit the Syrian significantly as a result of the current crisis with the country for nearly seven months, which impact negatively on the economic feasibility for the conduct of commercial flights.
Before the outbreak of popular movement in Syria was the Austrian Airlines going 12 flights a week to Syria, eight trips, including day and four night tours, but since the beginning of the crisis was to reduce the number of flights to four flights a week, until now been the decision to stop work until the beginning of spring the next.
The source, who declined to be named, said the workers in the office of Damascus will stay on top of their markets to follow up and conduct the necessary correspondence with the main center.
اسبانيا تستدعي سفير سوريا و" تحذره إثر اتهامات بمضايقة معارضين سوريين"
Spain summoned the Syrian ambassador, "warning him following accusations of Syrian dissidents harassed"
http://www.aksalser.com/index.php?page=view_news&id=c3bea8b047efd8e5aabf5bf272d2b644&ar=646394101
Saturday - October 29 - 2011 - 13:35:33
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain said that it had summoned the Ambassador of Syria, adopted at Madrid, Hossam El-Din Ala, and expressed his "concern and rejection of the work carried out by members of the embassy is considered harassment and intimidation to Syrian dissidents on its territory, and sent him a warning after the accusations."
U.S. Firm Acknowledges Syria Uses Its Gear to Block Web
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203687504577001911398596328.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
OCTOBER 29, 2011
By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES, PAUL SONNE and NOUR MALAS
A U.S. company that makes Internet-blocking gear acknowledges that Syria has been using at least 13 of its devices to censor Web activity there—an admission that comes as the Syrian government cracks down on its citizens and silences their online activities.
Blue Coat Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., says it shipped the Internet "filtering" devices to Dubai late last year, believing they were destined for a department of the Iraqi government. However, the devices—which can block websites or record when people visit them—made their way to Syria, a country subject to strict U.S. trade embargoes.
Blue Coat told The Wall Street Journal the appliances were transmitting automatic status messages back to the company as the devices censored the Syrian Web. Blue Coat says it doesn't monitor where such "heartbeat" messages originate from. Computer code reviewed by the Journal indicates that Syrians were also using other Blue Coat products, raising questions about how the tools came to be used this way and whether Blue Coat has violated the trade embargo.
As Arab Spring political uprisings have swept the region this year, Bashar al-Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than four decades, has overseen some of the bloodiest crackdowns on protesters. On Friday, Syrian troops opened fire on protesters, leading to fresh reports of deaths. According to the U.N., more than 3,000 civilians have been killed in Syria since the start of protests.
Blue Coat executives say they don't know how the devices got to Syria. The company says it alerted U.S. authorities in recent days to the "improper transfer" and is cooperating with government inquiries.
"We don't want our products to be used by the government of Syria or any other country embargoed by the United States," Steve Daheb, Blue Coat senior vice president, said, in the company's first detailed explanation of the matter. He said the company is "saddened by the human suffering and loss of human life" in Syria.
The discovery of the devices in Syria shows the difficulty of controlling U.S. tech exports and demonstrates how regimes manage to use Western technology to censor speech and stifle dissent even when they are subject to trade sanctions. As the Arab Spring uprisings swept the region this year, security forces used Western technology in their often brutal fight to retain political control.
Egypt's secret services used technology from a British company to eavesdrop on dissidents over Skype. Col. Moammar Gadhafi's regime snooped on the emails and Internet chats of Libyan dissidents using invasive technology from a French firm. And across the Gulf, Internet-service providers have been relying on tools from Blue Coat, Intel Corp.'s McAfee and the Canadian firm Netsweeper Inc. to snuff out opposition websites.
Since 2004, the U.S. has prohibited the export, without a special license, of most U.S. goods and services to Syria. According to the Commerce Department, applications for licenses to do business with Syria since then have been "subject to a general policy of denial."
Many companies don't track where their technology goes after an initial, legal sale. Though the U.S. government requires re-export licenses for controlled devices, the rules can be difficult to enforce.
A State Department official said, "We are reviewing the information that we have and monitoring the facts as they come in" and "are looking into" the Blue Coat matter. The authority to investigate potential embargo violations involving technology in Syria falls to the Department of Commerce. A spokesman there said the department doesn't comment on "ongoing investigations."
The devices' road to Syria is still partly unclear. The company says it shipped 14 of its ProxySG 9000 Internet-filtering appliances from Rotterdam to Dubai in late 2010, an order valued at an estimated $700,000. It believes 13 are being used to censor parts of the Syrian Internet. What happened to the 14th is unclear.
Blue Coat says it received a two-part order from a Dubai distributor in 2010 that identified the end customer as Iraq's Ministry of Communications. Blue Coat approved the order and delivered the devices to the distributor in the U.A.E. The company says it didn't follow up on where the devices went from there.
The Iraqi Ministry of Communications couldn't be reached to comment Thursday. Blue Coat declined to name the Dubai distributor.
"At the present time, the company cannot confirm how the appliances were transferred from the point of shipment or from Iraq to Syria," Blue Coat's Mr. Daheb said. The company is "continuing its own internal review."
Some of Syria's largest Internet-service providers have been using Blue Coat devices since as early as 2005, according to a person familiar with the matter. The order of 14 devices was the largest in recent memory, but as many as 25 appliances have made their way into Syria since the mid-2000s, with most sold through Dubai-based middlemen, this person said. Blue Coat says it is investigating other possible unauthorized transfers.
Blue Coat began life in 1996 as CacheFlow Inc., which sold appliances to businesses that quicken Web-page delivery, among other things. In 2002, it changed its name to Blue Coat and reinvented itself as a security company. The idea: Sell appliances that filter the Internet to protect big corporate networks. Today, that is Blue Coat's primary business.
The company has no corporate policy against selling to governments or Internet service providers engaged in censorship. Its devices block websites in the U.A.E., Bahrain and Qatar, a Journal investigation earlier this year determined.
Mr. Daheb says that "it is the government's role to set appropriate social policy and identify governments and entities that U.S. companies should not do business with."
Blue Coat's export-auditing system is focused on screening potential buyers before devices are sold, rather than on keeping track of devices once they are deployed, according to people familiar with the company.
Information about Blue Coat in Syria began to trickle out in August, after a "hacktivist" group called Telecomix managed to gain access to unsecured servers on Syria's Internet systems and found evidence of Blue Coat filtering. The group found computer records, or logs, detailing what Web pages the Blue Coat devices were censoring in Syria.
Earlier this month the group released those logs, but with all the Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses redacted for privacy reasons. IP addresses are unique numbers assigned to devices that connect to the Internet, often identifying location.
The Journal, however, has reviewed unredacted portions of the logs. The logs show the Blue Coat devices were filtering the Internet activity of individuals who were accessing the Web via Syrian IP addresses. The logs also include the serial numbers of the Blue Coat devices.
The logs offer a rare insight into what the Assad regime doesn't want Syrians to see online. Blocked sites include that of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, an opposition group banned in the country since it led an uprising against Mr. Assad's father in the 1980s, and the-syrian.com, a website dedicated to news about the uprising.
The devices blocked about 6% of the more than 750 million requests they filtered from July 22 to Aug. 6, according to a Journal analysis of the data. They blocked or monitored at least 26,700 attempts to connect to websites run by opposition figures or devoted to covering the Syrian uprising, such as all4syria.info and welati.net.
Visits to sensitive areas of social-networking sites were also recorded, but not necessarily blocked. Of more than 2,500 attempts to connect to facebook.com/syrian.revolution, for example, about 1,575 were blocked and 934 others were kept in the logs, according to the Journal's analysis.
Mr. Daheb said the devices censoring the Syrian Web don't have access to Blue Coat's main filtering database, which regularly categorizes new websites to be blocked by its software, such as pornography, gambling or religious sites. Blue Coat says it can't turn off the devices remotely.
The appliances do have Blue Coat service and support contracts. The company says it has now cut off contracts for the devices.
Also in the logs were indications that another Blue Coat product, PacketShaper, is being used in Syria. Blue Coat says it doesn't market or sell PacketShaper devices or software—which help companies keep computer networks running smoothly—in Syria due to the embargo.
The Blue Coat logs show that some people within Syria are also using a Blue Coat filtering product for personal computers, known as K9 Web Protection, which periodically interacts with the company's database of filtered websites. The K9 software works like this: When a person uses a computer with K9 to visit a certain website, the tool contacts Blue Coat to get information about the nature of the site and decides whether to block it.
It is possible, trade-law experts say, that such services could violate the U.S. embargo on Syria. "The executive orders this summer appear to be comprehensive," said Ronald Oleynik, head of the trade regulatory practice at the law firm Holland & Knight LLP.
Other software and service companies regularly prevent access from IP addresses in countries such as Syria. Google Inc., for example, does so for some of its software.
Blue Coat says its K9 software "may be eligible for export to Syria under exemptions that govern publicly available free software and informational materials incident to communications services." A person familiar with the matter said the company isn't sure and is awaiting word from U.S. authorities. In the meantime, Blue Coat's Mr. Daheb says the company has now revoked the licenses of K9 software to prevent access from Syria, "in an abundance of caution."
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