WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama's top national security advisers are meeting Wednesday to air their reservations about arming Syria's rebels, with officials saying the growing alarm over the Assad regime's rapid military advance is unlikely to translate into any rash U.S. action toward deeper involvement in the conflict.
The administration's caution persists despite its nearly two-year-old demand that President Bashar Assad step down, vows to help the besieged Syrian rebels on the ground and threats to respond forcefully to any chemical weapons use. U.S. officials hoped this week to revamp their strategy for halting the violence and motivating the government and the opposition to hold peace talks. But they don't know what to do to redefine a war that now includes Hezbollah and Iranian fighters backing Assad's armed forces, and al-Qaida-linked extremists beefing up the rebellion.
Despite increased support in Congress and the administration for lethal aid, officials said those closest to the president are still split on whether to begin providing Syria's armed opposition with weapons or to consider more drastic steps such as using U.S. airpower to ground Assad's gunships and jets. The officials spoke ahead of Wednesday afternoon's meeting at the White House on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the private talks.
"We have refocused our efforts on figuring out what to do to help the opposition on the ground, while still remaining focused on a political transition and still remaining in touch with the opposition on how we can best assist them," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. She cited the Assad regime's taking of the strategic town of Qusair last week and the influx of Lebanese Hezbollah and other foreign fighters as reasons for why the U.S. was rethinking its approach.
Obama's moves throughout the 27-month civil war, from political support for the opposition to nonlethal aid for its more moderate fighters, have occurred in close concert with America's partners in Europe. All agree at this point that the efforts haven't done enough. At the State Department on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry is hosting a meeting with William Hague, the foreign minister of Britain, an ally equally unsure about what to do to end fighting that has now killed some 80,000 people.
Kerry, who postponed a trip this week to Israel and three other Mideast countries to participate in the White House talks, is believed to be among the most forward-leaning members of Obama's national security leadership. Since becoming America's top diplomat in February, he has spoken regularly about the need to change Assad's calculation that he can win the war militarily, if only to get him into serious discussions with the opposition about establishing a transitional government. Assad's success at Qusair, near the Lebanese border, and preparations for offensives against Homs and Aleppo have made the matter more urgent.
Obama, who is flying from Massachusetts to Florida this afternoon, won't be at the meeting and it's unclear if he'll participate by videoconference. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and several other top aides of the president are expected to attend.
Despite foreshadowing a possible move toward lethal aid for months, officials said some members of the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence community remain hesitant about providing weapons, ammunition or other lethal support to a rebellion increasingly defined by extremists who, along with Assad, have turned a political insurrection into a sectarian war.
Even if nothing is decided this week, officials said the U.S., Britain and France, who together spearheaded the international intervention that helped overthrow Libya's Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, are trying to coordinate a common approach before Obama meets with his colleagues at next week's G-8 gathering of world leaders. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad's most powerful military and political backer, also will be present at the Northern Ireland summit.
In Boston on Wednesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney would only say that the U.S. was "constantly evaluating the situation in Syria and the options available."
Nothing, however, seems to be happening in Washington ? or in London or Paris ? fast enough to help Syria's rebels.
Desperate for weapons, even more so with an estimated 5,000 Hezbollah guerrillas propping up Assad's forces, the opposition is warning that Western inaction will come at a cost. Without greater support, they are warning that al-Qaida-linked and other militants will increasingly take over the revolution.
The anecdotal evidence suggests that such a process is already under way.
On Wednesday, activists said that Syrian rebels battled Shiites in a village in the country's east, killing over 60 people including civilians and prompting the State Department's Psaki to declare her agency "appalled" by what she described as a "massacre." Earlier this week, a 15-year-old boy was executed in public by Islamist rebel fighters in the city of Aleppo for mentioning the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's name in vain.
Finding a shared Syria strategy among the U.S., Britain and France is no easy matter. The U.K. and French governments are at least as divided as the Americans on what is the best course of action and have told their fellow European Union members they won't send any arms to Syria before August. And British Prime Minister David Cameron has promised British lawmakers a House of Commons debate before any such action.
In Washington, Congress is split between an increasingly assertive Senate and skeptical House. Democrats and Republicans in the upper chamber have been trying by pressure and law to force the Obama administration into giving arms to vetted, moderate rebel units, such as those under Gen. Salim Idris' command. Idris, chief of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, accompanied perhaps the leading U.S. hawk, Sen. John McCain, on an unannounced trip across the Syrian border last month.
Approving lethal aid, however, brings with it an assortment of new challenges for the administration and its allies. The discussion would then have to decide what weapons to provide, whom to give them to, what training to offer and who should do the training, U.S. and Western officials said. One Western official involved in strategy rejected the notion that weapons and ammunitions shortages were even the problem, citing poor military strategy and the inability of Syria's fractured opposition to coordinate effectively against Assad's more disciplined army.
Also Wednesday, the U.S. condemned a Syrian attack on a border town in Lebanon that lightly wounded one person. A government helicopter fired at least two missiles on the village of Arsal, and Psaki said it was an "unacceptable provocation" that risks dragging Lebanon into the Syrian war.
The U.S. has been increasingly concerned about the conflict spreading to Syrian neighbors such as Lebanon and Iraq, which have their own troubled histories of ethnic warfare. The U.S. also fears instability along Syria's southwestern border with Israel, which has struck several weapons convoys in Syria it says were intended for Hezbollah.
One option Obama has definitively ruled out is deploying U.S. military troops on the ground in Syria, while declaring chemical weapons use by the Assad regime a "red line" for more forceful U.S. action.
France and Britain say they've determined with near certitude that Syrian forces have used low levels of sarin in several attacks, but the administration insists it is still studying the evidence.
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Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
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