(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Obama reportedly also intends to "press” Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani "to ensure” that the massive amounts of weapons Qatar is purchasing and shipping to anti-Damascus insurgents does not end up with the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front militants "and other extremist groups” fighting the Syrian government when he welcomes the Qatari dictator to the White House on Tuesday, The Washington Post reports.
According to the report, "allegations” that "some Qatari aid is flowing to extremist” militant gangs in Syria have been made "primarily by Qatar’s Persian Gulf neighbors, which are rivals for regional influence” and have their own aims and objectives in the anti-Damascus intervention.
"All are friends of the United States, and their rivalry has put the Obama administration in a difficult position as it tries to establish the parameters of its Syria policy,” the influential US daily adds in its Tuesday report.
Further pointing to Washington’s efforts to keep its anti-Syria so-called "core group” together, the report adds that Obama also held talks earlier this month with United Arab Emirates (UAE) Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Saudi Arabia’s long-time Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal in separate meetings in Washington. In addition to US, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the US-led ‘core group’ includes France, Britain, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Jordan, UAE and Egypt.
In the next few weeks, the daily adds, Obama will also host Jordanian despot King Abdullah and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington to further discuss the US-led armed intervention efforts to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the only country in the region that has actively supported Palestinian resistance against premier American foreign ally, the Israeli regime.
Turkey and Jordan share borders with Syria and play host to thousands of Syrian refugees, displaced by the ongoing foreign-backed insurgency in the country. The Post report also cites "a senior State Department” official as claiming that Persian Gulf Arab government are not the only source of weapons shipped to anti-Damascus terror gangs in Syria and that rich Arab businessmen in the Persian Gulf also ship large amounts of arms to the militant groups.
"Some of my men, through their own connections, family and friends, know people in the gulf, business people who can literally get them millions of dollars in cases within a few days. How do I tell my guys don’t take that money from that business guy who is backed by an Islamist network?” a top anti-Damascus militant commander is quoted as saying by the unnamed US official.
Meanwhile, amid growing reports of a US plan for a military invasion of Syria under the pretext of securing the country’s chemical weapons, Director of American National Intelligence James Clapper stated in remarks at the US Senate last Thursday that collapse of the Syrian government would constitute "a huge strategic loss to Iran.”
This is while Washington has also claimed "an Iran threat” to justify major arms deals with the Israeli regime, Saudi Arabia and Qatar that are to be signed this week during visits by US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to the region this week.
Clapper, however, also expressed concerns that the foreign-backed unrest in Syria is destabilizing neighboring Jordan and Lebanon. Syria has been gripped by a deadly unrest since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of government forces, have been killed in the violence. Damascus says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants fighting the Syrian government are foreign nationals.
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