Syrian Officials Vows No Chemical Weapons Use; Hagel “Surprised” by Israeli Charge

Responding to this week’s charge by the head of Israel’s military intelligence that Syria has used chemical weapons against opposition forces, the Syrian Information Minister said on Wednesday that his nation would never use them against its citizens and not even Israel. The new allegation placed more pressure on Washington which has been trying to avoid confirmation that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has, indeed, crossed the line-in-the-sand that President Obama himself drew, calling it “a game changer.” On Wednesday, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel followed Secretary of State John Kerry in attempting to create some wiggle-room, when he told reporters in Cairo that, “Suspicions are one thing, evidence is another,” and said the US needs to rely on its “own intelligence,” not that of other nations, in this case meaning Israel. On Wednesday, the Interfax news agency quoted Information Minister Omran Al-Zoubi as saying, “Even if Syria does have chemical weapons, our leadership and our military will not use them either against Syrians or against Israelis, above all for moral reasons and secondarily on legal and political grounds.”