Jordan aid to rebels raises tensions with Syria

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan tightened security along its border with Syria, doubling the number of soldiers as President Bashar Assad's regime warned Thursday the kingdom is "playing with fire" by allowing the U.S and other countries to train and arm Syrian rebels on its territory.

The warning, coinciding with significant rebel advances near the border, plays into Jordanian fears that its larger neighbor might try to retaliate for its support of the opposition fighters.

The stepped up security also reflects the kingdom's fears that the chaos from Syria's 2-year-old civil war could lead to a failed state on its doorstep where Islamic militants have a free hand.

The Syrian warnings followed statements from U.S. and other Western and Arab officials that Jordan has been facilitating arms shipments and hosting training camps for Syrian rebels since last October.

A front-page editorial in the government daily al-Thawra accused Amman of adopting a policy of "ambiguity" by training the rebels while at the same time publicly insisting on a political solution to the Syrian crisis.

Jordan is "playing with fire," state radio said.

"Jordan's attempt to put out the flame from the leaked information will not help as it continues with its mysterious policy, which brings it closer to the volcanic crater," al-Thawra said.

Over the years, Syria has accused Jordan of being America's "puppet" because of its strong alliance with the United States and a "spy" for Israel, with which Amman maintains cordial ties under a peace treaty signed in 1994.

A Jordanian security official said the kingdom had tightened security along its 230-mile (370-kilometer) border with Syria, including doubling the number of soldiers in the last two days, though he declined to disclose the size of the force.

He said Jordan was also hoping to receive one or two Patriot missile batteries, which the U.S. might temporarily pull out of the Persian Gulf to station on Jordan's northern border. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements to the media.

Jordan's chief of staff, Gen. Mishaal Zaben, said Jordan was installing more cameras, radar and sophisticated early detection equipment to help prevent smuggling and infiltrations across the border and assist Syrian refugees as they cross into Jordan. The equipment will "significantly bolster Jordan's defenses along the border with Syria," he said.

Still, Jordanian Information Minister Sameeh Maaytah said the political tension with Syria would not evolve into an all-out war.

"Syria must be aware that Jordan has no desire to meddle in its internal affairs whether by training rebel forces, or facilitating arms shipments to them," he added. "But Jordan must protect its interests, land, border and people."

The rebels being trained in Jordan are mainly secular Sunni Muslim tribesmen from central and southern Syria who once served in the army and police. The force is expected to fill a security vacuum by protecting the border with Jordan, assisting displaced Syrians and setting up a safe haven for refugees.

They are also envisioned as a counterbalance to the Islamic militant groups that have proven to be among the most effective of the myriad rebel factions fighting Assad's forces on the ground.

Chief among these is Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist group and says is associated with al-Qaida.

"Jordan can't sit idle and watch al-Qaida and other militants seizing control of its common border with Syria," Maaytah said. "It must take proactive steps to arrive at a state of equilibrium in the security structure on the border."

Jordan has also long feared that the Assad regime could use chemical weapons against it, or that agents linked to the regime or its allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah could attack the kingdom.

Israel and the United States also are concerned about militants potentially operating in the area near the Israeli frontier with Syria in the Golan Heights should Assad's regime collapse.

Though Jordan is supporting one segment of the disparate patchwork of rebel groups, it is concerned about the recent rebel advances in the south along its border.

One fear is that the fall of the area into rebel hands could unleash lawlessness on the border and provide a haven for Islamic extremist groups such as Nusra Front.

The Islamic militants, particularly Nusra, are complicating the battlefield by thwarting much-needed international aid from countries such as the U.S. that do not want to bolster extremist jihadi groups.

Activists reported more advances in the south on Thursday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said opposition fighters seized most of the Karak neighborhood in the province of Daraa after several days of fighting.

Daraa province borders Jordan and its provincial capital of the same name was the birthplace of the uprising against Assad two years ago.

The Observatory also reported heavy clashes in the town of Sheik Maskeen, on the route from the Jordanian capital, Amman, to Damascus, and at a checkpoint outside a camp for displaced Syrians on the outskirts of Daraa. It said rockets fell inside the camp, but did not say who fired them, or how many people died.

On Wednesday, opposition fighters captured a military base outside Daraa. That victory followed the rebel takeover of Dael, one of the province's bigger towns, and another air defense base in the area late last month.

It is widely believed that the rebels are close to seizing control of the two border posts with Jordan — a significant gain that would bolster arms shipments to the rebels.

In other violence, several people were killed and others buried under rubble when shells slammed into a residential area in the district of Barzeh in the capital's northeast, where rebels are known to operate. The opposition Barzeh media center said it was a surface-to-surface missile, which would be the first such attack in Damascus. The Observatory confirmed there were several deaths but said the nature of the attack was not immediately clear.

The Syrian revolt started with peaceful protests but has morphed into a civil war with increasingly sectarian overtones. Sunni Muslims dominate rebel ranks, while the Assad regime is composed mostly of Alawites, an offshoot Shiite group to which the president and his family belong. More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict, according to the U.N.

In comments distributed Thursday, Assad criticized the recent Arab League decision to give Syria's seat to the opposition, calling it "meaningless theater."

"This League needs legitimacy itself. It cannot grant legitimacy to others nor withdraw it," he said in an interview with Turkey's TV channel Ulusal Kanal.

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Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed to this report from Damascus, Syria.

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Tensions Mount Over Gun Control Push

PHOTO: Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., at a news conference, October 2009, on the passage of House legislation for …

President Obama took his fight for tougher gun control laws to Colorado today as the debate over gun control has gotten increasingly heated, even menacing at times.

White House spokesman Jay Carney denied suggestions that the president's gun legislation was dead, telling reporters on Air Force One on the flight to Colorado that "negotiations are ongoing on a variety of pieces of this proposal in an effort to try to find the votes necessary."

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., canceled a public appearance Tuesday because of death threats she received.

"Yesterday, several death threats were phoned into my New York office in response to news reports about a bill I authored requiring gun owners to have insurance. The calls were fielded by young interns, who were understandably shaken by this experience," Maloney said in a statement emailed to ABC News today.

"Given all the acts of gun violence we have seen in the past two years, the shootings in Aurora and Newtown, the attack on my friend and colleague Gabby Gifford, I take the threat of more gun violence very seriously," Maloney said.

Brian Malte of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence called the threats against Maloney "outrageous."

"We deplore any sort of threats like that. We need to have a national conversation and a very civil discourse about what is needed in this country," Malte told ABC News.

Other gun control advocates have received similar threats since the debate over gun laws reignited in the past year.

Colorado State Rep. Rhonda Fields received threatening emails and a voicemail attempting to pressure her to drop gun reform legislation she backs in her state. Her office released excerpts from the emails, including one from Feb. 15, full of misspellings, crude and racially-charged insults, and a reference to the shooting of Rep. Giffords.

Dudley Brown, head of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, used an ominous double entendre when discussing his opposition to more gun laws.

"I liken it to the proverbial hunting season," Brown told NPR. "We tell gun owners, 'There's a time to hunt deer. And the next election is the time to hunt Democrats.' "

While the federal government wrestles with the gun debate, states are moving ahead on their own, often in contradictory ways. Colorado state lawmakers have already passed a law requiring background checks for all gun transfers and banning high-capacity ammunition magazines. They go into effect in July.

These laws have provoked a backlash from gun ownership advocates. At least two groups have already canceled shooting competitions in the state, citing the new laws.

New York, where Mayor Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Gun Violence campaign is based, passed restrictions even more quickly than Colorado. In January, the state legislature approved the SAFE Act, making it the state with the strictest gun laws in the country.

The law includes limits on ammunition capacity, assault weapons and sales of guns and ammunition.

Connecticut lawmakers, motivated by the shooting spree that took the lives of 26 children and adults at Sandyhook Elementary School, are set to impose even stricter gun laws in a state that already had some of the strictest in the country. Other states have gone in the other direction, seeking to preserve or expand protections for gun owners.

Alaskan lawmakers introduced a bill this January that would forbid enforcing federal bans on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, according to Alaska Public Media. Arkansas lawmakers voted to allow guns in churches. In one town in Georgia, residents who don't own a gun will be in violation of the law nine days from now.

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Kerry, Karzai make show of unity after weeks of tensions

KABUL (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry paid an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Monday for talks with President Hamid Karzai, a U.S. official said.

Kerry and Karzai will discuss a host of issues including Afghan reconciliation, the transfer of security responsibility to Afghan forces as most foreign troops prepare to leave and Afghanistan's elections, the official told reporters.

The United States and Afghanistan are hoping to stabilize the country before most U.S.-led NATO combat troops leave by the end of 2014.

Karzai's government is trying to open formal negotiations with the Taliban, who have remained resilient in the face of superior NATO firepower in the war now in its 12th year.

Karzai is due to travel to Qatar within days to discuss the peace process and the opening of a Taliban office for the purposes of conducting negotiations.

Commenting on Karzai's trip to Qatar, the official told reporters: "I wouldn't want to overplay it but I think that it's a very positive sign. It's another step on a continued path toward ... getting to some sort of reconciliation process.

"Nobody is expecting that he will open an office there in a week. Nobody is expecting that he will be sitting down with Taliban in a week. This is a long process and this is one more small but positive step in that ... process."

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Michael Georgy)

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Tensions high in Lebanon after assault on clerics

BEIRUT (AP) — Several hundred demonstrators angry over attacks against Sunni Muslim clerics blocked roads with garbage bins and burning tires in Beirut and other Lebanese cities on Monday, enflaming old tensions already boiling over the conflict in Syria.

The country is sharply split along sectarian lines, and the civil war next door has exacerbated those divisions among supporters and opponents of President Bashar Assad. The split is a legacy of the nearly three decades when Damascus all but ruled Lebanon, until 2005.

Gunmen supporting opposing sides of the Syrian civil war have frequently clashed, raising concerns that fighting could spread.

Assad's ally, the militant Hezbollah group, is Lebanon's strongest political and military movement and has been accused by Syria's overwhelmingly Sunni rebels of assisting Assad in his military crackdown. Assad belongs to a small branch of Shiite Islam.

Hezbollah denies any of its members are fighting alongside Assad but says several of its fighters have been killed while defending themselves against Sunni gunmen in areas along the border.

Two violent incidents in Lebanon itself have turned up the temperature.

On Sunday night, Mazen Hariri and Ahmad Fekhran, two Sunni Muslim sheikhs at Dar al-Fatwa, Lebanon's highest Sunni religious authority, were attacked by a group of Shiite men shortly after leaving a mosque in downtown Beirut. They were beaten up by Shiites in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Khandak al-Ghamik.

Two other Sunni sheikhs were assaulted in another Shiite neighborhood of Beirut in a separate incident.

As news of the incidents spread, dozens of people took to the streets, blocking roads in the capital and in the predominantly Sunni cities of Sidon and Tripoli in southern and northern Lebanon.

Trying to contain the fallout, Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said those responsible for the attacks were not affiliated with any party.

But many Sunnis quickly direct their anger at Hezbollah and Amal, the two main Shiite groups in Lebanon.

Lebanon's Grand Mufti, Mohammed Rashid Kabbani said the attacks were "not a coincidence."

"I'm not accusing any specific faction, but Shiite leaderships in Hezbollah and Amal ... must lift the cover on the perpetrators," he said Monday.

Hezbollah was quick to condemn the attacks and assisted in handing over the suspects to security forces.

Demonstrations had a clearly sectarian tone.

"The turban of the Sunnis is stronger than attempts at sedition," read a poster held up by protesters at a rally in the mainly Sunni Tarik al-Jdideh district in Beirut.

Regional tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have increased significantly because the Syrian civil war. Most of the rebels fighting to topple Assad are from the country's Sunni majority, while the president belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

In Lebanon, mortar and artillery shells from the Syrian side often explode in Lebanon.

On Monday, Syrian warplanes hit targets along Syria's border with Lebanon. The state-run National News Agency said the attack hit a remote area near the town of Arsal.

The shelling came just days after Damascus warned Beirut to stop militants from crossing the border to fight with rebels.

A senior Lebanese official confirmed the fighter jets' activity along the frontier, but said it was not clear if targets inside Lebanese territory were hit. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Lebanon, a tiny country with a population of about 4 million, also shelters about 360,000 Syrian refugees.

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Egypt opposition: Election will add to tensions

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's president set parliamentary elections to begin in April — a decision that an opposition leader denounced Friday as "a recipe for disaster" because of the ongoing political turmoil in the country.

About 15,000 people took to the streets in the Suez Canal city of Port Said to demonstrate against President Mohammed Morsi, hanging effigies of him in the main square. Residents have been on a general strike for six days, demanding punishment for what they considered a heavy-handed police crackdown during unrest in the city.

Morsi scheduled the staggered, four-stage voting process to begin April 27 and end in June. The newly elected parliament would convene on July 6, according to a decree issued late Thursday night.

He hopes the election will end the political turmoil that has beset Egypt for the past two years, since the ouster of longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak. The upheaval has scared away foreign investors and dried up tourism, both crucial foreign currency earners that helped the government pay for subsidized goods needed by the poor for survival.

But Mohamed ElBaradei, who leads one of the main opposition groups, the National Salvation Front, wrote on his Twitter account Friday that Morsi's "decision to go for parliamentary elections amidst severe societal polarization and eroding state authority is a recipe for disaster."

The NSF accuses Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood supporters of monopolizing power and reneging on campaign promises to set up an inclusive government that introduces far-reaching reforms.

The opposition has called for amending articles in a new constitution that passed in a nationwide referendum. It also demands the resignation of the current technocrat Cabinet appointed by Morsi that includes eight Brotherhood ministers and other Islamists.

Morsi took over as president in June 2012 with the help of some opposition groups and Islamists who voted against his rival, a former Mubarak-era prime minister. Morsi's popularity has since eroded due to power-grabbing decrees temporarily issued last year that allowed his supporters to rush the constitution to a nationwide vote before a high court packed with Mubarak appointees could disband the process.

The vote took place during massive street protests against Morsi and the Islamist-led body that drafted the charter. It passed by 64 percent of votes amid low turnout and a boycott by thousands of overseeing judges.

On the second anniversary of the Jan. 25 uprising, anger spilled out onto the streets and violence again engulfed the nation. About 70 people died in a wave of protests, clashes and riots in the past four weeks, and more than half were killed in Port Said alone.

Factory workers, activists and laborers in Port Said have held street rallies that brought the city on the northern tip of the Suez Canal to a halt, although shipping in the international waterway has not been affected.

Port Said commentator Sayid Azab said the city opposes Morsi's timetable for the parliamentary vote.

"Everyone is rejecting the elections and asking how they can take place in the absence of stability," he said.

Civil disobedience in Port Said has stopped work at the foreign-run Suez Canal Container Terminal. Managing director Klaus Hol Laursan said 2,000 workers have been unable to reach the terminal for four days due to protesters blocking the street, and the army has been unable to help.

"We are, as a business, not part of the conflict. We are bystanders hurt by circumstances," he told The Associated Press. "In order to be able to attract business, we need stable productivity so we can help Egypt grow and recover its economy."

The political unrest has hit Egypt's foreign currency reserves, which have fallen below a critical level to less than $14 billion. The country is in talks with the International Monetary Fund for a nearly $5 billion loan that would shore up confidence again in the country's economy and free up other loan requests. Insiders say talks have been prolonged because of Morsi's reluctance to implement unpopular austerity measures ahead of elections.

Abdullah Shehata, an economic expert with the Brotherhood, declined comment on when austerity measures could be implemented, but said the elections will help the country's ailing economy.

"The elections will be positive because it will be the final institution to fall into place after the presidency and the constitution," he said. "The coming parliament will be elected by the people and will help build confidence in Egypt again. "

In Cairo, the opposition party led by former Mubarak rival Ayman Nour said its offices were torched and stormed by masked gunmen Friday. Speaking to the state-run Ahram Arabic website, the group said the men stole documents and videotapes before setting it ablaze.

The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party was undeterred by criticism of Morsi's election announcement. The party's deputy, Essam el-Erian, was quoted on the group's Facebook page as saying that he hopes the upcoming parliament will be "diverse" and include Islamists, liberals and leftists. He also warned against a boycott.

"Everyone understands the importance of this stage and that the absence of their voice is a big mistake and will mean a lengthy absence from parliament, its parties and its politics during this stage of building Egypt," he said.

The group has already been setting the stage for elections through outreach programs, including helping the poor receive subsidized bread that is often hard to find.

The Brotherhood and more conservative Salafis have grassroots support, partly through vast networks of charities that help the poor.

Competition among the various Islamist parties is expected to be fierce, particularly after signs of a rift between the Salafi Al-Nour and the Brotherhood began surfacing in recent weeks, including a public spat over credit for who organized a reconciliation meeting with liberal opposition figures.

The opposition says it does not want a repeat of the voting scenario in 2011, when parliamentary elections began as protesters were battling security forces to demand a timetable for presidential balloting and the end of military rule. More than 40 people were killed in those clashes, and many independent and liberal candidates withdrew from the race in protest.

The Brotherhood won nearly half the seats in what was the nation's first free election. The more conservative Salafis came in second, while secular and liberal groups trailed significantly. That parliament was disbanded on June 14, 2012, after the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that a third of the chamber's members were elected illegally.

El-Erian said he expects Islamists to again win about 75 percent of the seats.

The staggered election will likely result in ballot fatigue for Egyptian voters who have already stood in line multiple times in the past two years for legislative and presidential elections that included runoffs, as well as two nationwide referendums.

According to Thursday's decree, Egypt's 27 provinces will be divided into four groups that will vote separately over two days in a period ending on June 27. This process is supposed to give the more than 50 million voters enough time to participate.

The first phase of the election takes place amid Palm Sunday and Easter for Egypt's minority Coptic Christians who tend to travel during the holidays and have consistently voted against the Muslim Brotherhood.

In addition, the country's highest court ruled this week that at least 10 articles in the election law were unconstitutional, and sent them to the upper house of parliament for amendment, including what it called the "arbitrary" drawing of districts that critics say favored the Brotherhood.

The founder of the opposition April 6 movement said if the election law is not agreed upon, they will not support participation in elections.

"The election laws have not been agreed upon and this is an essential problem," Ahmed Maher told the AP.

The unrest has swept over other provinces too, with diesel shortages in Alexandria and Assiut, as well as strikes in Mahalla.

Port Said protester Mohammed Manae signaled that a parliamentary election could mean more violence.

"We not only object to these elections, we will not let them happen," Manae said.

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El Deeb reported from Port Said, Egypt. Mosaad el-Gohary in Port Said contributed to this story.

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