'Encouraging' progress in dismantling Syria chemical arsenal -U.N.

               
An international team of chemical weapons experts has made "encouraging initial progress" as it works towards the elimination of Syria's poison gas arsenal, the United Nations said on Thursday.          

"Documents handed over yesterday by the Syrian Government look promising, according to team members, but further analysis, particularly of technical diagrams, will be necessary and some more questions remain to be answered," the United Nations said in a statement.         

The international team consists of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague and United Nations personnel assisting them in their work.           
Earlier in the day, International chemical-weapons inspectors left their Damascus hotel for a second full day of securing the sites where they intend to work.             

The disarmament experts must negotiate immense security challenges as they work amid the civil war to meet tight deadlines for eliminating President Bashar Assad's estimated 1,000-ton arsenal of chemical weapons.             

The inspectors' mission - endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution passed last week - is to scrap Syria's capacity to manufacture chemical weapons by November 1 and destroy its entire stockpile by mid-2014.         

An advance group of 19 OPCW experts and 14 UN staff members arrived in Damascus on Tuesday, and they will be joined within a week by a second group of inspectors.          

Their mission stems from a deadly attack on opposition-held suburbs of Damascus on August 21 that the UN has determined included the use of the nerve agent sarin.         

This comes as a Kremlin aide said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama may discuss the Syria crisis on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in Bali next week. 

Turkey approves mandate to send troops to Syria:

Turkey's parliament voted on Thursday to extend by a year a mandate authorising the deployment of troops to Syria if needed after the government said the possible use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assad posed a threat to Turkey.           

The motion, put forward by the ruling AK Party, which has a strong parliamentary majority, had been widely expected to pass despite stiff resistance from opposition parties. The current mandate is due to expire on Friday.   

Political prisoners:

An international human rights organization says the Syrian government is unlawfully holding tens of thousands of regime opponents and torturing many in custody.
 
Human Rights Watch says those arrested by President Bashar Assad's regime include medics who treated wounded protesters, businessmen who raised money for displaced Syrians and even software developers who worked with citizen journalists.
 
A report by the New York-based group released on Thursday offered accounts of 21 Syrians who had been detained.
 
They told the group they were beaten in custody with batons, cables and metal rods. HRW cites some as saying they were sexually abused and raped.
 
On the field:

Several powerful Syrian rebel groups on Thursday demanded al Qaeda-linked militants and a rival rebel faction stop fighting and called on the hardline Islamists to withdraw their forces within 48 hours, a statement said.         

The al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized Azaz, about 5 km (3 miles) from the frontier with Turkey, last month and has repeatedly clashed with the local Northern Storm brigade since then.            

A statement posted online by four rebel brigades on Thursday called for an "immediate ceasefire" between the two sides and called on them to submit their dispute to an Islamic court in Aleppo, about 30 km (20 miles) to the south.           

"We ask our brothers in the faction of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to withdraw their forces and equipment to their essential bases immediately," said the statement.             

"We consider them above spilling the blood of Muslims or rushing to describe them as infidels and apostates."            

The statement was signed by commanders from the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawheed, Suqour al-Sham and Army of Islam brigades, and a copy was posted to Northern Storm's Facebook page. It did not say what the groups would do if the two sides did not stop fighting or if ISIL did not withdraw.                

Rebel divisions have hurt their fight against President Bashar al-Assad's better equipped and organised forces in the 2-1/2-year-old conflict. Tensions have been rooted partially in conflicting ideologies, but more often in disputes over resources, territory and spoils of war.            
Also on Thursday, activists in the rebel-held city of Raqqa to the east accused ISIL fighters of smashing a statue of an early Islamic leader because they considered it idolatrous, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.           

Separately, a video posted online showed rebel commanders in Rastan, a town in the outskirts of the central city of Homs, criticising ISIL and the Nusra Front, another al Qaeda-affiliated faction.           

ISIL released an audio recording this week accusing Northern Storm of provoking the fighting in Azaz and saying the media was distorting its image by unfairly blaming it for the clashes.


REUTERS/AP