By Peter Lukimson, exclusively to VK
Israel hailed the news of Turkish PM Erdogan promising to ‘do all in his power to prevent any terrorist groups from obtaining the chemical weapons possessed by Bashar Assad’s regime in case of total chaos in Syria’. The piece of news came to Tel-Aviv from Washington. Accorging to the Israeli intelligence today Syria has the largest stock of chemical weaponsin the Near East stored in 20 undergrownd bunkers. In is quite understandable that after the beginning of the unrest in Syria the Israeli defence Ministry is extremely concerned with the danger of these weapons slipping into the hands of Hizbollah or some other terrorist organisation.
When the Israeli military shared their concern with their American colleagues the latter addressed Ankara. First of all, Turkey has steady relations with Syrian opposition, and secondly Turkish special services have a broad network of agents in the Syrian army and government, so Ankara knows exactly where the bunkers are and how their security works.
According to the Israeli diplomats, US and Turkey are carefully coordinating their efforts as far as Syria is concerned, and Ankara even agreed to lend Turkish aerodromes to USAF if Washington decides to deliver an airstrike against Syrian army. However, for now Israel is more concerned with the fact that 50 Syrian soldiers who were dislocated on Israeli-Syrian deserted and joined the rebels, and handed them some antitank and surface-to-air missiles. Israel is concerned with possible provocations so it strengthened the guard on its border with Syria.
