Putin gets tough ( Archived) (62)

woodstock1: barry bama is a dumb sob........a lot of our politicians are ignoring citizens' yells that obama rots and we do not want to get involved......we are weary of the war supply company stockholders pushing for more wars.....actually, barry should send cruise missles into certain parts of chicago.....

chris27292729: Cleverly distributed by the S, Africans billioners ,to some rising political stars, wasn't Ramaphosa a leader of some union????if remember correctly,so to have them under control.The 3 you mentioned they only allowed to have a very small piece of the pie.

chris27292729: Cleverly distributed by the S, Africans billioners ,to some rising political stars, wasn't Ramaphosa a leader of some union????if remember correctly,so to have them under control.The 3 you mentioned they only allowed to have a very small piece of the pie.

tomcatwarne: Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin set for collision over Syria at G20 summit

Russian president signals he will take action if America strikes at Assad as US counterpart admits relations have hit a wall

World leaders will gather in St Petersburg on Thursday for what has transformed into an international showdown with Vladimir Putin threatening to send a missile shield to Syria if the US launches an attack without the authority of the United Nations.

The G20 summit, hosted by Putin, had been expected to focus on the world economy and growth, but will now be dominated by the Middle East crisis, even if the formal agenda remains fixed on the slowdown of growth in emerging markets.

Barack Obama, speaking during a stopover in Sweden before the summit, denied his political credibility was at stake but admitted relations with Russia had hit a wall. He insisted he had not set the red lines requiring a military response if the Syrian government deployed chemical weapons.

"The world set a red line when governments representing 98% of the world's population said the use of chemical weapons was abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use even when countries are engaged in war," he said. "That was not something I just kind of made up, I did not pluck it out of thin air."

He added: "My credibility is not on the line. The international community's credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important.

"Keep in mind, I'm somebody who opposed the war in Iraq, and I'm not interested in repeating mistakes about basing decisions on faulty intelligence," the US president said at a news conference in Stockholm.

On Tuesday Obama portrayed his plans for US military action as part of a broader strategy to topple Bashar al-Assad, as the White House's campaign to win over sceptics in Congress gained momentum.

Putin, in an interview published on Wednesday, said it was too early to talk about what Russia would do if the US attacked Syria but added: "We have our ideas about what we will do and how we will do it in case the situation develops toward the use of force or otherwise. We have our plans."

He then said Russia might restart Syria's suspended S-300 air defence missile contract. Describing the weapon as "very efficient", he said: "If we see that steps are taken that violate the existing international norms, we shall think how we should act in the future, in particular regarding supplies of such sensitive weapons to certain regions of the world."

The statement could also be a veiled threat to revive a contract for the delivery of the S-300s to Iran, which Russia cancelled a few years ago under strong US and Israeli pressure.

But Obama arrives at the summit with his hand strengthened by the growing impression that he will win the support of Congress next week to take military action. In signs that the political tide was slowly turning Obama's way in Washington, US senators on an important committee yesterday agreed on a draft resolution backing the use of US military force in Syria. The Senate foreign relations committee passed an amended resolution to authorise military action. It authorises strikes against the Syrian regime within a 60-day window, extendable to 90 days, as requested by the White House.

But it also includes tougher wording introduced by the hawkish Republican senator John McCain, which makes it "the policy of the United States to change the momentum on the battlefield in Syria".

Obama also retains the support of the French and the personal backing of David Cameron, even though the British government is now debarred from joining any action owing to last week's mishandled Commons vote.

Rey Yahoo.