By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 6 -- Selling US military action on Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry told MSNBC's Chris Hayes that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are involved in training armed groups in Syria to be more moderate. Kerry said:
"there’s a very careful vetting process that’s taking place where people have to come out of Syria and they spend a period of time. They are trained appropriately after being vetted, and then they go back in. And the Turks, the Jordanians, the Qataris, the Saudis, the Emiratis, a lot of people are involved in that process."
This description of Saudi and Qatari involvement in Syria seems partial, to say the least. Kerry went on to name, as supporters of military action on Syria, this same grouping along with France and one other country: Poland.
Observers of how the US works in the United Nations now expect the US to strong arm micro-states to come out in support.
Meanwhile at the G20 in St. Petersburg, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with and issued read-outs about Turkey's Ergogan, Germany's Merkel and France's Francois Hollande (and foreign minister Laurent Fabius).
Two attendees were listed for France, as Ban brought along envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to the meeting with the French (but not Germany or Turkey). With Erdogan Ban discussed not only Syria but also Cyprus. But with France, there was no mention of Mali, or the Central African Republic, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In terms of the training that Kerry claimed for Syrian rebels, it's worth noting as Inner City Press did months ago that the DRC's 391st Battalion, implicated in 135 rapes in Minova in November 2012 and in corpse desecration more recently, was trained by the US.
Click here to view the US Mission to the UN's response to Inner City Press about the DRC 391st Battalion. We publish responses -- when we get them. While not answered or allowed at the UN on September 5, will US Ambassador Samantha Power address, in DC at the Center for American Progress later today, why not wait for the UN report? Watch this site.
