Fugitive Syrian brought back to Romania

The Russian foreign ministry said on Friday that Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil is scheduled to head to Moscow on Monday to hold a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.     

The meeting comes as Moscow and Washington are seeking to organize a peace conference between the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and the rebels in order to end the long simmering Syrian crisis.                    

This as the top US military officer told a Senate panel Thursday that the Obama administration is deliberating whether to use military power in Syria, where a civil war entering its third year has killed almost 93,000 people.                        

Amid an increasing clamor among President Bashir Assad's opposition for active U.S. involvement, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said during congressional testimony that he has provided President Barack Obama with options for the use of force. But he declined to detail those choices, saying "it would be inappropriate for me to try to influence the decision with me rendering an opinion in public about what kind of force we should use."                                     

The remarks by the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman came after Senator John McCain, a leading Republican, asked him which approach in Syria would carry a greater risk: continued limited action on the part of Washington or more significant actions such as the establishment of a no-fly zone and arming the rebel forces with the weapons they need to stem the advance of President Bashar Assad's forces.                

Asked about Dempsey's comments, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama always asks his military commanders for options "and that is true in an arena like Syria." He said the president is constantly reviewing U.S. options in Syria.                   

McCain later told a group of reporters he plans to block Dempsey's confirmation, saying he was dissatisfied with the answers to the questions Dempsey was asked about Syria.       

Leading senators including Levin and McCain, have been pressing Obama to take a more forceful approach to defeat Assad's forces. While the administration has authorized lethal aid to rebel forces battling Assad's troops, it isn't trying to enforce a no-fly zone in which Syria's combat aircraft would be barred from flying, or otherwise intervene militarily to halt the war.      

Fugitive Syrian:           

Romania said on Friday that a fugitive Syrian businessman who was sentenced in absentia to 20 years for ordering the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists in Iraq was handed over to Romania's authorities, and is now in police custody.                     

Omar Hayssam was sentenced in 2007 on charges that he ordered the kidnapping of the journalists in Iraq in 2005. They were freed after 55 days in captivity.       

A statement from the presidential office did not say how Hayssam got to Romania. He had fled to Syria from Romania in 2006. Hayssam had lived in Romania for 24 years before fleeing.   A spokesman for Romania's president refused to say whether authorities in Damascus had turned Hayssam over.              

On the field:             

Warplanes hit the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province, killing at least five people and burying dozens under destroyed homes. At least 10 children and women were among the wounded, the Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said.                 

In other fighting, at least 12 pro-government gunmen were killed in clashes in the central city of Homs, and five soldiers were killed in a booby-trapped home in the Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun, the Observatory reported.       


REUTERS/AP