US reportedly considering direct aid to Syrian rebels

PARIS –  The Obama administration, in coordination with some European allies, is for the first time considering supplying direct assistance to elements of the Free Syrian Army as they seek to ramp up pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down and end nearly two years of brutal and increasingly deadly violence.

Officials in the United States and Europe said Tuesday the administration is nearing a decision on whether to provide non-lethal assistance to carefully vetted fighters opposed to the Assad regime in addition to what it is already supplying to the political opposition. A decision is expected by Thursday when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will attend an international conference on Syria in Rome that leaders of the opposition Syrian National Coalition have been persuaded to attend, the officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the shift in strategy has not yet been finalized and still needs to be coordinated with European nations, notably Britain. They are eager to vastly increase the size and scope of assistance for Assad's foes.

Kerry, who was a cautious proponent of supplying arms to the rebels while he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been consulting with European leaders on how to step up pressure on Assad to leave power. The effort has been as a major focus of his first official trip abroad as America's top diplomat. On the first two stops on his hectic nine-nation tour of Europe and the Middle East, in London and Berlin, he has sought to assure the Syrian opposition that more help is on the way.

In London on Monday, he made a public appeal to opposition coalition leader Mouaz al-Khatib not to boycott the Rome meeting as had been threatened and to attend the conference despite concerns among Assad foes that international community is not doing enough. Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden made private telephone calls to al-Khatib to make the same case.

"We are determined that the Syrian opposition is not going to be dangling in the wind, wondering where the support is, if it is coming," Kerry told reporters after meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Hague said that the deteriorating conditions in Syria, especially recent scud missile attacks on the city of Aleppo, were unacceptable and that the West's current position could not be sustained while an "appalling injustice" is being done to Syrian citizens.

"In the face of such murder and threat of instability, our policy cannot stay static as the weeks go by," Hague told reporters, standing beside Kerry. "We must significantly increase support for the Syrian opposition. We are preparing to do just that."

The officials in Washington and European capitals said the British are pushing proposals to provide military training, body armor and other technical support to members of the Free Syrian Army who have been determined not to have links to extremists. The officials said, however, that the U.S. was not yet ready to consider such action although Washington would not object if the Europeans moved ahead with the plans.

The Obama administration has been deeply concerned about military equipment falling into the hands of radical Islamists who have become a significant factor in the Syrian conflict and could then use that materiel for terrorist attacks or strikes on Israel.

The Italian government, which is hosting Thursday's conference, said on Monday that the Europeans would use the meeting "to urge the United States' greater flexibility on measures in favor of the opposition to the Assad regime."

"They will be asking, in particular, that `non-lethal' aid be extended to include technical assistance and training so as to consolidate the coalition's efforts in the light of what emerged at the latest meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council," the foreign ministry said in a statement. In a recent meeting, European Union foreign ministers agreed that support to the rebels needed to be boosted.

Officials in Washington said the United States was leaning toward providing tens of millions of dollars more in non-lethal assistance to the opposition, including vetted members of the Free Syrian Army who had not been receiving direct U.S. assistance. So far, assistance has been limited to funding for communications and other logistical equipment, a formalized liaison office and an invitation to al-Khatib to visit the United States in the coming weeks.

The officials stressed, however, that the administration did not envision American military training for the rebels nor U.S. provision of combat items such as body armor that the British are advocating.

The officials said the U.S. is also looking at stepping up its civilian technical assistance devoted to rule of law, civil society and good governance, in order to prepare an eventual transition government to run the country once Assad leaves.

In Europe, meanwhile, Kerry on Tuesday visited Berlin where he met his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, for the first time in his new post, spending more than an hour discussing the Syria conflict. Russia has been a strong supporter of Assad and has, along with China, repeatedly blocked efforts at the United Nations to impose global sanctions against the regime unless it stops the violence that has killed nearly 70,000 people.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the two met for an hour and 45 minutes, spending more than half that time on Syria in what she called a "really serious and hardworking session."

Kerry and Lavrov discussed how they could implement the so-called Geneva Agreement, which is designed to get the Syrian government and rebels to plan a transitional government for the time after Assad leaves office, Nuland said.

Lavrov told Russian news agencies that his talks with Kerry were "quite constructive." On Syria, he said the two reaffirmed their "intention to do all Russia and the U.S. can do. It's not that everything depends on us, but we shall do all we can to create conditions for the soonest start of a dialogue between the government and the opposition."

Syria's foreign minister was in Moscow on Monday and while there expressed a willingness to meet with opposition leaders.

The Syrian National Coalition is skeptical about outside help from the West and threatened to boycott the Rome meeting until a series of phone calls and meetings between Kerry and his ambassadors and Syrian opposition leaders repaired the schism. The council now says it will attend the meeting, but is hoping for more concrete offers of help, including military assistance.

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US denied direct access to Benghazi suspect held in Egypt

The U.S. has been denied direct access to the only publicly known suspect in custody in connection with the Benghazi terror attack, Fox News has learned, with U.S. interrogators still unable to sit in the same room as the Egypt-held prisoner to ask questions. 

Abu Ahmed, also known as Mohammed Jamal, is suspected of establishing Islamist training camps in Eastern Libya where militants who took part in the Sept. 11 Benghazi terrorist attack were able to train. 

Ahmed is not suspected of directly taking part in the attack which left four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, dead. But this is at least the second time U.S. interrogators have been denied access to a suspect held by a foreign government.   

In January, Tunisian authorities released Ali Ani al-Harzi, who is suspected of taking part in the attack, citing a lack of evidence.   

FBI agents finally got access to al-Harzi after the personal intervention of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. 

Thomas Joscelyn, with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said some of the militants Ahmed helped train "directly took part" in the Benghazi attack. 

"As early as 2011, he was setting up training camps inside eastern Libya as early as 2011 ... and they were drawing in recruits from around North Africa and Egypt -- if you bring them in, train them in terms of how to operate mortars and various types of heavy artillery, and it's that type of artillery that was used in the attack in Benghazi." 

Joscelyn, who was the first to report the access problem, said he's been told U.S. officials have asked the Egyptians for access to the suspect but were denied by the Egyptian authorities. 

"The Egyptians like to control the interrogations and interviews of these suspects for their own reasons and of course the Americans should want access for our purposes as well," he said. 

Neither the CIA nor FBI provided comment on the record about this latest case. 

Separately, sources familiar with the case told Fox News that Egyptian authorities have been providing to U.S. authorities information from their own investigation of Ahmed. 

The implication is that the lack of direct access does not mean a total lack of information. In recent confirmation hearings, the president's nominee for CIA director was pressed about the Tunisian case and the problems the FBI faced. 

When Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked about access to al-Harzi, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said: "We work with our partners across the board and when they are able to detain individuals, according to their laws, we work to see if we can have the ability to ask them questions, sometimes indirectly and sometimes directly." 

The concern about access to suspects is one of many lingering worries lawmakers have about the terror attack of last year. 

Tensions came to a head earlier this year, when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton clashed with Republicans over the issue of whether the administration tried to downplay the level of planning that went into the attack by initially casting it as spontaneous. 

Lawmakers, though, continue to press for more details about the warnings the administration received about security in the months leading up to the attack and what President Obama did the night of Sept. 11.

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