REPORT: Video of Syrian rebel biting heart of dead soldier emerges as Obama, Cameron hold joint press conference

        
A possible conference to gather representatives of the Syrian government and opposition to try to end their civil war may slide to early June, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday.

Noting that Secretary of State John Kerry last week said the conference could be held by the end of May, the spokeswoman told reporters, "It looks like it will slip past that to possibly early June. I don't have an exact date at this point."

This comes as U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged their continued support for the people of Syria, including more humanitarian aid and a push toward a transitional government to help bring peace.

Obama, said the United States will continue to work to establish the facts about chemical weapons use in Syria.

"We will continue to work to establish the facts around the use of chemical weapons in Syria and those facts will help guide our next steps," Obama said.

Positions:

For his part, Cameron said he saw an "urgent window of opportunity" before "worst fears" in Syria would be realized, and said Britain would double its non-lethal support to Syrian opposition forces in the coming year.

Cameron added that he has not made a decision to arm the opposition in Syria, but that Britain can do more through technical assistance and other help to the Syrian opposition.

Speaking at a joint news conference with the US president at the White House, Cameron said helping the opposition was key to preventing the growth of extremists in Syria.

This comes after Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the world’s silence regarding the Syrian crisis is the reason behind the terrorist attack across the Turkish-Syrian border.

During a visit to Berlin, Davutoglu said that “the latest attack shows how 'a spark may turn into a fire' when the international community remains silent and the United Nations Security Council fails to take serious measures”.

Davutoglu described the Reyhanli attack as a violation to the “red line” set by Turkish authorities, adding that the international community should take a joint stance against the Syrian regime.

“Turkey has the right to take any actions in response to the Reyhanli attacks,” Davutoglu concluded.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin's talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Russia on Tuesday will focus on the situation in Syria, the Kremlin said, amid growing concerns that Moscow may soon provide Damascus with an advanced anti-aircraft weapon.

Israeli officials say Russia is on the verge of selling S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria and they have asked Russia to stop supplying Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime with such "game-changing" weapons.

On the field:

On another note, a video of a Syrian rebel commander cutting the heart out of a soldier and biting into is emblematic of a civil war that has rapidly descended into sectarian hatred and revenge killings, Human Rights Watch said.

The New York-based group said an amateur video posted on the Internet on Sunday shows Abu Sakkar, a founder of the rebel Farouq Brigade who is well known to journalists as an insurgent from Homs, cutting into the torso of a dead soldier.

The video has caused outrage among both supporters of President Bashar al-Assad and opposition figures.

"I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog," the man says to offscreen cheers of his comrades shouting "Allahu akbar (God is great)".

Meanwhile, an activist group said that Syrian troops have taken full control of a town near a highway linking the capital Damascus with the Jordanian border.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that government forces reclaimed all off Khirbet Ghazaleh on Sunday, days after heavy fighting. He says rebel fighters withdrew.

Syrian state TV had reported late last week that troops secured the highway between Damascus and the southern town of Daraa, near the Jordanian border. Abdul-Rahman said the highway only reopened Sunday, after troops took full control of the area.

Crash of Turkish jet:

Separately, the loss of a Turkish fighter jet near Turkey's southern city of Osmaniye, 50 km (30 miles) from the Syrian border, is likely to have been an accident, Turkey's NTV television cited military sources as saying.

The military earlier said it had lost touch with an F-16 fighter on an operational flight near Osmaniye at around 1115 GMT after the pilot radioed to say he was ejecting.


AP/REUTERS/LBCI


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