Copters in Syria May Not Be New, U.S. Officials Say

WASHINGTON — When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton accused Russia on Tuesday shipping attack helicopters to Syria that would “escalate the conflict quite dramatically,” it was Obama administration’s sharpest criticism of Russia’s support for the Syrian government.

What Mrs. Clinton did not say, , was whether the aircraft new shipments or, as administration officials say is more likely, helicopters that Syria sent to Russia a few months ago routine repairs and refurbishing, and which were now to be returned.

“She put a little spin it to put the Russians a difficult position,” said one senior Defense Department official.

Mrs. Clinton’s claim about the helicopters, administration officials said, is of a calculated effort to raise the pressure on Russia to abandon President Bashar al-Assad, its main ally in Middle East. Russia has so stuck by Mr. Assad’s government, worried that if he ousted, Moscow would lose its influence in the region.

response to Mrs. Clinton’s allegations, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, accused the United States hypocrisy on Wednesday, saying it had supplied weapons that could used against demonstrators in other countries in region. Mr. Lavrov, during a visit to Iran, repeated Russia’s claim it is not supplying Damascus with any weapons that could be used a civil war.

“We are not providing Syria or any other place with things can be used in struggle peaceful demonstrators, the United States, which regularly supplies such equipment to this region,” Mr. Lavrov said. He singled a recent delivery to “one of the Persian Gulf states” — perhaps a reference Bahrain. “But some reason the Americans consider this completely normal.”

Syria has long been a staunch Russian ally and is home Russia’s only naval base on the Mediterranean Sea. But American officials warned the Russians that Mr. Assad’s exit is inevitable, and that if Russia wants to preserve influence in Syria, it needs to be part of the to arrange a political transition. If Russia is viewed complicit in the Assad government’s attack its own people, these officials said, it would be shunned any new Syrian government, as well as by the of the Arab world, which is increasingly appalled by the violence.

Mrs. Clinton underscored this point in remarks Wednesday after meeting India’s foreign minister: “Russia says it wants peace and stability restored. It says it has particular love lost for Assad. And it also claims to have vital interests in the region and relationships that it wants to continue to keep. They all of that at risk if they do move more constructively right now.”

Though Mrs. Clinton’s remarks about the helicopters came answer to a question at a session sponsored by the Brookings Institution, they were part a lengthy discussion of the West’s options in dealing Syria and seemed anything but accidental.

Administration officials declined to give details the helicopters, saying the information classified. But White House and intelligence officials have backed the substance of her comments. Some officials said that whether the helicopters were new refurbished, they were equally deadly when turned the civilian population.

“What Secretary Clinton said was a continuation of what we’ve saying,” the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, told reporters. “The situation in Syria is obviously terrible. Assad’s brutality is unacceptable. He will go in history as a tyrant who will loathed by generations of Syrians who are the victims his brutality.”

Timing may have also driven Mrs. Clinton. In her remarks, she noted the United Nations Security Council must decide by mid-July to extend the mandate for Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan, which included putting monitors the ground to try to ensure the government and rebel fighters abiding the terms of a cease-fire. Mr. Annan is the special envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League.


Adapted and abridged from: The New York Times, June 13, 2012