EU Eases Syria Sanctions to Help Opposition

PARIS — European Union foreign ministers have agreed to ease an oil embargo against Syria to help rebel forces fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar el-Assad. The move follows a decision by the United States to dramatically increase aid to the Syrian opposition.

Speaking to reporters in Luxembourg, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the bloc's agreement to ease an oil embargo against Syria will help the opposition Syrian National Coalition take advantage of oil and gas reserves under its control.

"Three types of transactions will now be possible: imports of oil and petroleum products; exports of key equipment and technology for the oil and gas industry; and investments in the Syrian oil industry. We've made the energy our priority to ensure the changes have a rapid impact," said Ashton.

The decision by the EU foreign ministers comes a day after Secretary of State John Kerry announced the United States would double to $250 million its nonlethal assistance to Syria's opposition forces.

Speaking after Monday's meeting, British Foreign Secretary William Hague acknowledged that more needed to be done to help the Syrian opposition.

"It is a tragedy that we've not been able to agree a U.N. Security Council resolution to require a political process to take place," said Hague. "We will keep working on that. But in the absence of that, as we have been discussing here today and as I have been arguing, we will need to do more to support the National Coalition, to protect people in Syria, to save lives in Syria, to support the opposition."

Britain and France have also been pushing to lift an EU embargo against arming Syria's rebellion. The current embargo is set to expire at the end of May. But some EU countries like Germany are reluctant to arm the rebels, fearing the weapons could fall into the wrong hands. Those reservations were aired again Monday by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

Westerwelle says Germany has serious concerns the arms could end up in the hands of terrorists. But he said if other European countries reach their own conclusions that go in a different direction, Germany will respect this.

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Experts Caution Against Rushing to Conclusions in Boston Bombings

Chechnya, located in the north Caucasus region, has been a thorn in Russia’s side for centuries. First czars, then Soviet leaders and Russian presidents fought independence movements there. Now Chechnya is under the iron-fisted rule of Moscow’s pro-Russian leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Charles King, a Caucasus expert at the Wilson Center, said “It is certainly the case that the North Caucasus have been over the course of the last 20 years and one would say even over the course of the last 200 years, a rather violent place where secessionist movements have been relatively common. It was a region of the Russian Federation described as the single greatest security threat to the Russian state by the Russian authorities some time ago.”

For more than a decade, Chechen militants engaged in terrorist acts: from blowing up airliners, bombing the Moscow metro, seizing a theater in the Russian capital or a school in North Ossetia.

But analysts - including King - caution not to jump to conclusions about the Boston bombings, allegedly carried out by Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, two brothers who are ethnic Chechens and came to the United States at least eight years ago.

“We don’t know much at this point about the political motivation for their alleged action,” said King. “We don’t know much about the way in which they might have become radicalized - and I think probably at this point speculating about the real Chechen angle on this would be kind of speculating about the Scots-Irish angle on someone like Timothy McVeigh.”

King said “We do not focus on the specific ethnic background of perpetrators - in a way, there is a more frightening side of this - it is the domestic American angle rather than the international one.”

Robert Legvold of Columbia University said there is no evidence of an international conspiracy.

“There are no reports that the older brother had gone off to some kind of an exercise in Pakistan or places that some of these Americans have gone to that have gotten involved with al-Qaida or related groups,” said Legvold. “Certainly to assume that Chechnya or anybody else in Chechnya has anything to do with these two, that seems to me to be completely off base.”

Legvold cautioned about U.S. media reports about the alleged bombers. “The majority of Americans don’t have a clue as to what Chechnya is or where it is, or what this is all about,” said Legvold. “So there are going to be some unfortunate associations done in the public on the U.S. side. The media is already confused about this kind of thing a bit.”

Experts said during these times of heightened tensions, cooler heads must prevail.


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Analyst Credits Technology for Progress in Boston Bombing Case

WASHINGTON,DC — A US-based security analyst says he is not surprised by the latest developments in the Boston bombing case. One of the two suspects, Tamerlan Tsarneav, was killed following a shootout early Friday. A massive manhunt continues for the other suspect, Dzhokar Tsarnaev.

David Sutter, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, credits modern communication tools for the progress security officials are making in the case.

“It was not surprising that they were identified because the modern age is such that everyone has cell phones, video surveillance….it’s very difficult in a public place to commit a crime without been seen,” he says.

So how could two young people amass so many explosives without anybody noticing? Sutter says they may not be acting alone, and that the bombing could be part of a wider conspiracy.

He also offers a second explanation.

“Sadly in the United States, it is possible to amass a lot of weaponry and ammunition without being noticed, because we have very liberal laws as far as obtaining weapons,” explains Sutter. “Because of that, we have many cases in which persons intent on murdering other people have no trouble putting together a big arsenal.”

The Hudson scholar says it’s unlikely the Boston bombings will have any effect on the ongoing national debate regarding gun control legislation.

If in fact the two suspects hail from the predominantly Moslem Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan regions of Central Asia, should Moslems in this country fear profiling and suspicion of their community? Sutter doesn’t think so.

“I think Americans understand that these criminals don’t represent the Moslem American population,” he says. “I believe this will not lead to persecution against the law-abiding Moslems who live in this country and who are loyal to this country.”
Officials say the two bombing suspects are brothers and have resided in the United States for several years.

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