Global Security Newswire

A senior Israeli official on Sunday said his government would attempt to prevent the export to Syria of a Russian air-defense system, Agence France-Presse reported.

Damascus is reportedly making payments on a 2010 agreement to acquire four S-300 batteries that could be used against both hostile aircraft and missiles at distances of up to 125 miles. Russia has confirmed it would complete deliveries on an old contract to Syria for an unspecified anti-aircraft technology.

"Such a sale to Syria would alter the balance of forces in the region and these weapons could fall into the hands of Hezbollah," Silvan Shalom, who sits on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, said in a radio interview.

The Bashar Assad regime might take shipment of its first S-300 system within three months and receive the full order before the year is over, according to Israel.

Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin are slated to meet in Moscow on Tuesday for talks expected to include discussion of the purported S-300 sale, the Associated Press reported.

Israeli Tourism Minister Uzi Landau on Monday said export of Russian arms to Syria encourages "instability in the Middle East" and that "anyone who provides weaponry to terror organizations is siding with terror," the Associated Press reported.

It is not feasible to convene this month an international forum aimed at negotiating an end to hostilities between Damascus and the Syrian rebels, an anonymous Russian official told journalists on Saturday. The United States and Russia last week announced plans to organize the conference as soon as possible, Reuters reported.

The official said there is a dispute about who should be allowed to participate in any Syrian peace talks, according to Russian news outlets.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Monday said there are at present no plans for U.S. and Russian specialists to jointly probe the alleged use of chemical arms in Syria though, according to ITAR-Tass.

The United States has said it is reasonably confident that forces loyal to Assad have used sarin nerve agent against Syrian opposition forces on at least one occasion. The Obama administration is calling for a fuller scientific U.N. investigation on the matter before any decisions on decisive intervention in the civil war are taken.

Injured Syrians who received medical care in Turkey displayed symptoms of exposure to chemical toxins, Reuters reported. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Friday in Amman, Jordan, that "we have been making tests and we have some indications regarding chemical weapons being used, but in order to make sure and verify we are continuing these tests and will be sharing these tests with U.N. agencies."

Davutoglu said "you can see who is affected by chemical missiles by their burns."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday said there was "strong evidence" pointing to chemical attacks by the Assad regime, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Any U.S. military intervention to ensure there is no chemical weapons proliferation in Syria would probably require sending U.S. troops into the country, The Hill  quoted a senior Republican House lawmaker as saying.

"You don't say 'putting boots on the ground' in this sort of environment, in any lighthearted fashion," Representative Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) told C-SPAN on Friday. "Some people seem to have the idea you can just bomb these places that have chemical weapons, and that simply is not a very good option."