From Al Quds al-Arabi, via Haaretz, new information concerning a story I reported early this month, about an Israeli request to Jordan to preemptively bomb Syrian chemical weapons sites:
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a secret meeting in Jordan with King
Abdullah II, the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported on Wednesday.
According
to the report, which has yet to be confirmed by Israeli officials, the
meeting focused on possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad would
use chemical weapons against rebels in the ongoing sectarian conflict
raging in that country.
Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg reported in
The Atlantic earlier this month that Israel has asked Jordan twice in
the last two months for a green light to attack chemical weapons
facilities in Syria.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sent
representatives of the Mossad intelligence agency to Amman twice
already, to coordinate the matter with the Jordanians and receive their
"permission" for the operation, Goldberg wrote.
The Jordanians,
however, responded negatively to the request and refused to grant their
approval. American officials quoted in the article said the Jordanians
told Israel the "time was not right" for such an action.
Goldberg
wrote further that while Israel could carry out an operation of the
kind without Jordan's approval, they were worried about the
repercussions it could spark.
Arab media outlets recently
reported that the Jordanian army has declared a state of emergency, and
that its troops have been issued gas masks in anticipation of chemical
weapons being employed by the Syrian regime near the border. Although
this report remains unconfirmed, senior Jordanian officials emphasize
that they warned the world that the Syrians might use such weapons last
year, and that such an eventuality will require the swift intervention
of Western powers, since, according to the Jordanians, no nation in the
region, including Israel, can overcome Syria's chemical weapons arsenal.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/12/an-update-on-jordans-plans-to-counter-syrian-wmd/266630/
Wednesday 26 December 2012
An Update on Jordan's Plans to Counter Syrian WMD
Posted @ 06:50
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment