REPORT: Syrian troops capture western town

                  
Syrian state TV said government forces have captured a western town near the border with Lebanon, a week after opposition fighters seized it.            

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirms troops are almost in full control of Deir Attiyeh, whose population is nearly a third Christian.   
          
President Bashar Assad's forces launched an offensive this month in the rugged Qalamoun region north of the capital and along the Lebanese border in an attempt to prevent the flow of fighters from its western neighbor.          

Last week troops captured the town of Qara, one of the biggest in the area. A day later the rebels launched a counteroffensive and captured the nearby Deir Attiyeh.               

The fighting forced thousands of Syrians to flee to Lebanon. Syria's conflict, now well in its third year, has killed more than 120,000 people. The crisis started as a peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad but deteriorated into all-out civil war after a brutal government crackdown on dissent.

US offers to destroy Syrian chemical arms at sea:

The Obama administration is offering to destroy some of Syria's deadliest chemical weapons in international waters aboard a nearly 700-foot (213-meter), U.S. government-owned ship, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.           

The plan, still subject to final approval, would involve destroying the weapons, likely aboard the MV Cape Ray in the Mediterranean Sea, with U.S. Navy warships patrolling nearby.            

This approach would avoid the vexing diplomatic, environmental and security problems posed by disposing of the materials on any nation's soil.              

The Obama administration has used international oceans in other sensitive cases where land-based options were precluded. The U.S. Navy buried al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at sea to avoid his tomb becoming an attraction for extremists. The government has been questioning terror suspects for as long as it takes aboard Navy ships since the CIA closed its secret prisons overseas and President Barack Obama has refused to send more prisoners to the detention center at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.               

The decision to proceed with the chemical disposal plan would be made by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a global chemical weapons watchdog agency with 190 member states.                 

In a statement Wednesday in the Netherlands, the watchdog agency said the effort to ship Syria's chemical arsenal out of the country "continues to pose challenges due to the security situation on the ground."             

No country has committed to disposing of the chemical weapons on its own soil, which is why the U.S. offer to destroy the deadliest of the chemical components at sea is seen as a likely option.               

     
AP


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