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Israel Didn't Ask for U.S. Military Action in Syria

(Jerusalem Post) Sam Sokol and Michael Wilner - Assertions that Israel recently asked the U.S. to take military action in Syria are "false," Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Sunday. "We never asked and never encouraged the U.S. to take military action in Syria," Steinitz said. He added that Israel would "do its utmost to prevent delivery" of Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles to "terrorists and Hizbullah." Israeli Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren said, "We are not recommending, we are not pressuring [and] we are not urging the United States to take any specific action in Syria, with one exception," he said. "If the United States does decide to provide lethal weaponry to the rebels, we would ask that the recipients of that aid be very closely vetted, because we have had bad experience with that." "Israel and the United States are sovereign countries, and whether it's with Syria or Iran, each country has the right to determine how best to act and defend itself," Oren said. He added that, for the past week, he had to deal with "categorically untrue" reports from American outlets such as The New York Times and NBC News that Israel was encouraging action to demonstrate that strategic red lines held weight in Washington.
2013-04-29 00:00:00
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