Syrian opposition hopes Russia to pressure Assad

David Cameron pledged Monday to redouble efforts for a negotiated settlement to the Syrian crisis, saying he no longer believed that the rebels could overthrow President Bashar al-Assad outright. The pledge came as gruesome video emerged. The video shows a rebel militia leader from Homs, Khaled al-Hamad, or “Abu Saqqar,” cutting the heart and liver out of a corpse.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian rebels on Wednesday freed 48 Iranians held captive since August after President Bashar Assad’s regime promised to release hundreds of detainees in the first major prisoner swap of the country’s civil war, officials said. The exchange came just days after Assad vowed to press ahead with the fight against rebels despite international pressure to end the bloodshed that has left more than 60,000 people dead.

The instances in which chemical weapons are alleged to have been used in Syria were purportedly small in scale: nothing along the lines of Saddam Hussein’s 1988 attack in Kurdish Iraq that killed thousands. That raises the question of who would stand to gain as President Bashar Assad’s regime and the opposition trade blame for the alleged attacks, and proof remains elusive.

Russia warned Thursday Syria would descend into “bloody chaos” if a proposal from Lakhdar Brahimi, the international peace envoy, to set up a transitional government fails. Mr. Brahimi challenged those in the conflict to work together to pave the way for democratic elections and sideline President Bashar al-Assad. His proposal received strong backing from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said negotiations were the only way to end the fighting.

With the scandal-ridden administration in major need of a geopolitical distraction, preferably of the exothermic variety, and with Syria still in desperate need of "liberation" by remote controlled-airborne units, the Senate may have put two and two together, and following today's introduction of the bipartisan "Syria Transition Support Act", at least one part of the US legislative process - the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - is set to vote as soon as next week on whether to arm Syrian rebels.

ROME — The Obama administration said Thursday that it will provide the Syrian opposition with an additional $60 million in assistance and — in a significant policy shift — will for the first time provide nonlethal aid like food and medical supplies directly to rebels battling to oust President Bashar Assad.