Mark Kelly on Sen. Flake's opposition to gun plan: 'Maybe he hasn't read the bill'

Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, knocked Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake for his opposition to the Senate gun control bill -- saying he's one of many lawmakers "looking for a reason to get to no."

"It appears to me that maybe he hasn't read the bill because his concerns are addressed in the legislation," Kelly said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

Giffords was severely wounded in the 2011 Tucson mass shooting. She and her husband have since launched a campaign urging lawmakers to approve expanded background checks and other provisions.

Flake, though, said on his Facebook page that the current proposal "goes too far."

Kelly has a meeting with Flake later Tuesday. "When I explain to him in person, I think we can get him to come around," Kelly said.

Asked what would happen if Flake ends up not supporting this bill, Kelly said his organization would seek to replace him in the Senate. "Friendship is one thing, saving people's lives is another," he said.

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Mark Kelly on Sen. Flake's opposition to gun plan: 'Maybe he hasn't read the bill'

Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, knocked Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake for his opposition to the Senate gun control bill -- saying he's one of many lawmakers "looking for a reason to get to no."

"It appears to me that maybe he hasn't read the bill because his concerns are addressed in the legislation," Kelly said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

Giffords was severely wounded in the 2011 Tucson mass shooting. She and her husband have since launched a campaign urging lawmakers to approve expanded background checks and other provisions.

Flake, though, said on his Facebook page that the current proposal "goes too far."

Kelly has a meeting with Flake later Tuesday. "When I explain to him in person, I think we can get him to come around," Kelly said.

Asked what would happen if Flake ends up not supporting this bill, Kelly said his organization would seek to replace him in the Senate. "Friendship is one thing, saving people's lives is another," he said.

View the original article here

Mark Kelly on Sen. Flake's opposition to gun plan: 'Maybe he hasn't read the bill'

Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, knocked Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake for his opposition to the Senate gun control bill -- saying he's one of many lawmakers "looking for a reason to get to no."

"It appears to me that maybe he hasn't read the bill because his concerns are addressed in the legislation," Kelly said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

Giffords was severely wounded in the 2011 Tucson mass shooting. She and her husband have since launched a campaign urging lawmakers to approve expanded background checks and other provisions.

Flake, though, said on his Facebook page that the current proposal "goes too far."

Kelly has a meeting with Flake later Tuesday. "When I explain to him in person, I think we can get him to come around," Kelly said.

Asked what would happen if Flake ends up not supporting this bill, Kelly said his organization would seek to replace him in the Senate. "Friendship is one thing, saving people's lives is another," he said.

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Members of Syrian leader's sect form opposition group, back rebels

CAIRO –  Dozens of people from Syrian President Bashar Assad's own minority sect met in Cairo on Sunday to send an unusual message to their fellow Alawites back home: Join the opposition before it is too late.

The Alawites have long been seen as a backbone of the Assad regime, and a decision to support the rebel force in Syria is complicated by the fact that many see their own futures interlocked with Assad's survival.

The pressure on Alawites who dare oppose Assad comes not only from the regime, but also from within their own families. Nearly all of the 50 Alawites at the opposition conference have been arrested, abused or threatened for their political views. One participant said he received an email threatening his life if he attended the conference.

The Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, are a tiny sect, representing roughly 12 percent of Syria's population. Many live in towns and villages along the mountainous Mediterranean coast. Most have either rallied behind Assad or stayed quietly on the sidelines of the 2-year-old civil war, which has killed more than 70,000 people.

The opposition meeting — the first of its kind for Alawite Syrians since the war began — reflects fears that they would fall victim to revenge killings and assassinations should Assad's regime fall. Some are particularly worried about the influx of foreign jihadist fighters into Syria who view Shiites as heretics.

Many minority Alawites see the war in Syria as a fight for survival against the Sunni majority. Alawites hold key posts in the army alongside some Sunnis and members of other groups that have been given top government and military positions to foster loyalty to the regime.

A statement by the Alawite opposition group said "the Syrian regime has no identity except that of tyranny."

"The Syrian regime lies when it says it protects minorities, particularly the Alawites ... in an attempt to portray to the world that it is fighting Islamic extremists and terrorism," the statement said.

Rita al-Suleiman, 29, said she had to flee Syria last year after her brother told her that he had been questioned in prison about her anti-regime activities in Homs.

"I was at first careful not to attend meetings, but then my family said they have nothing to do with me so I grew bolder," she said. "It's been very hard to leave them behind."

Like others at the conference, she said many Syrians are no longer afraid to voice their opinions, but that Alawites are under greater pressure from members of their own community not to speak out.

Bashar Aboud, 40, said his relatives warned his parents they would burn their house down if he continued defying the regime. The 40 year-old father of two, who now resides in Cairo after fleeing Syria during a 2001 crackdown on opposition figures, said his parents were forced to go on Syrian TV and disown him.

Those at the conference stressed that Alawites have long been and want to continue to be a part of the fabric of Syrian society.

"In the end we are all on the same boat and it's sinking," Aboud said, referring to Syria's precarious situation. "We are part of the team that is trying to save this boat."

One participant described the conferees as a real opposition movement that does not want to be separated from the homeland. He said he opposed dividing Syria along sectarian lines or the possibility of a breakaway enclave for Alawites as was the case under French mandate for a few years in the late 1930s.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals against his family in Syria.

Despite efforts by the participants to frame the conflict as a despotic regime against its people, signs of sectarian warfare are rife in Syria.

The army is being reinforced by pro-regime militias, packed with Alawites who have been accused of conducting massacres in which hundreds of civilians, including women and children, were killed.

The Syrian government claims gunmen driven by the agendas of foreign countries are responsible for the killings, but the United Nations and other witnesses have confirmed that at least some were carried out by pro-regime vigilante fighters.

Another Alawite participant at the conference said his two sons were forced out of work last year to serve in one of the national security branches, and were deployed to areas of heavy fighting, including the outskirts of Damascus.

He claimed that his sons, ages 28 and 30, had witnessed severe beatings and killings by the regime. The participant, a long-time opposition activist who wrote under the pseudo name Sami Saleh, said he and his two sons relied on Sunni fighters in the rebel Free Syrian Army to help them escape through Turkey.

He also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal against relatives still in Syria.

Some three-fourths of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, but the country is also home to other Muslim groups, as well as Christians and ethnic communities of Kurds, Armenians and others. All coexisted with varying degrees of ease under Assad's regime, founded more than four decades ago by his father, Hafez, and inherited by Bashar in 2000.

The Alawite opposition conference was funded by rich businessmen from the sect, according to its organizer Bassam Youssef, who was detained for 11 years under Hafez for his communist activities against the ruling Baath Party.

A large green-striped Syrian rebel flag draped the speaker's podium and a banner in the back read: "We are all Syria. We are with a united Syria."

Several members of the main Sunni-led Syrian opposition coalition also attended the Alawite conference in solidarity. They too have struggled, coalescing around a unified voice. Its president, Mouaz al-Khatib, resigned Sunday citing frustration with the level of international support and constraints imposed by the body itself.

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Syrian opposition elects interim prime minister

ISTANBUL –  Syria's opposition coalition early Tuesday elected a little-known American-educated IT manager and Islamic activist to head an interim government to administer areas seized by rebel forces from President Bashar Assad's troops.

Ghassan Hitto received 35 votes out of 48 ballots cast by the opposition Syrian National Coalition's 63 active members during a meeting in Istanbul. The results were read aloud by coalition member Hisham Marwa to applause from a few dozen of his colleagues who had waited until after 1 a.m. to hear the results.

"I miss my wife and children and I look forward to seeing them soon," said Hitto, who has lived in the United States for decades and recently moved from Texas to Turkey to help coordinate aid to rebel-held areas.

When asked what his interim government's first priority would be, Hitto said he planned to give a speech later Tuesday outlining his plans.

Coalition members hope the new government will unite the rebels fighting Assad's forces on the ground and provide services to Syrians living in rebel-held areas, many of which have been battered by the country's civil war and suffer acute shortages of food, electricity and medical services.

But the new government faces huge challenges, starting with its ability to gain recognition from rebel factions on the ground.

As rebels have progressed in northern and eastern Syria, a patchwork of rebel groups and local councils have sought to fill the void left by the government's withdrawal by organizing security patrols, reopening bakeries and running courts and prisons. It is unclear if these groups, many of which have taken charge of their own towns, will accept an outside authority, especially if it is headed by someone who has spent decades abroad.

"How can a civilian come and tell these fighters on the ground, 'Drop your weapons. It's my turn to rule'?" asked Adib Shishakly, the coalition's representative to a group of Gulf nations known as the Gulf Cooperation Council, before the results were announced.

Hitto's election follows two failed attempts to form interim governments due to opposition infighting. Coalition members also say they received insufficient international support to allow them to project their authority to groups inside Syria. The new government could have the same problem.

"You have to find a way to cooperate with these groups and you can only rule by providing services, which requires funding," Shishakly said.

The council's creation of an interim government renders even more remote the chances of ending the war through negotiations with Assad's government — the preferred solution of the U.S. and other world powers.

The U.S. has been cool to the idea of a rebel government to rival Assad's and supports a peace plan put forward by the U.N. and the Arab League that calls for the formation of a transitional government that represents both the regime and the opposition.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday reiterated his call for a political solution "while there is still time to prevent Syria's complete destruction."

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also said the Obama administration wants to leave the door open for a political solution. Regarding the rebels, he also said the U.S. would not "stand in the way of other countries that made a decision to provide arms, whether it's France or Britain or others."

French President Francois Hollande said last week that his country and Britain were pushing the European Union to lift its arms embargo on Syria so they can arm the rebels. Germany and other EU nations oppose the move, saying it will exacerbate the violence.

Coalition members in Istanbul rejected the idea of negotiating with the Syrian government before Assad leaves power.

"We've heard a lot about this 'peaceful solution,' but there are no positive, real steps from the regime," said Nizar Al Hrakey, a coalition member.

On Monday, the head of Syria's largest official rebel group, the Free Syrian Army, threw his weight behind the idea of an interim government.

"We consider it the only legal government in the country," Gen. Salim Idris told reporters in Istanbul.

However, Idris's authority within the country remains limited, with some of the most successful rebel groups on the ground rejecting his authority.

The Syrian government did not immediately comment on the Istanbul meeting. It blames the war on a foreign conspiracy to weaken Syria being carried out by terrorists on the ground.

Hitto did not receive a resounding mandate from the coalition, of which he is not a member. Of the group's 63 active members, only 48 voted. Four cast blank ballots and Hitto received 35 of the remaining votes.

Hitto was born in Damascus, the Syrian capital, in 1963, according to his official resume provided by the coalition. Little known in Syria, he has lived in the United States for more than two decades, most recently in Texas. He has academic degrees from Purdue University in Indiana and Indiana Wesleyan University.

He worked for a number of different technology companies and helped run a Muslim private school called the Brighter Horizons Academy. He is also a founding member of the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which was founded to give legal aid to Muslims following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

He is married with four children.

Activist Ghassan Yassin, who watched the vote after traveling from the embattled city of Aleppo, said he saw "no reasons to be optimistic about the formation of an interim government."

Yassin said he had only heard of Hitto recently and doubted his government would have the resources to make a difference.

"The question is not whether there is an interim government, but whether there will be any support for it," Yassin said.

Syria's conflict began with political protests in March 2011, and has since spiraled into a civil war, with hundreds of rebel groups fighting Assad's forces across the country. The U.N. says more than 70,000 people have been killed and millions pushed from their homes by the violence.

Also on Monday, Assad's fighter jets struck targets near the town of Arsal, Lebanon, according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency. The two countries share a porous border.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Syrian warplanes and helicopters had fired rockets into northern Lebanon, striking near Arsal.

"This constitutes a significant escalation in the violations of Lebanese sovereignty that the Syrian regime has been guilty of," Nuland said. "These kinds of violations of sovereignty are absolutely unacceptable.'

___

Associated Press writer Bradley S. Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.

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Syrian opposition elects interim prime minister

ISTANBUL –  Syria's opposition coalition early Tuesday elected a little-known American-educated IT manager and Islamic activist to head an interim government to administer areas seized by rebel forces from President Bashar Assad's troops.

Ghassan Hitto received 35 votes out of 48 ballots cast by the opposition Syrian National Coalition's 63 active members during a meeting in Istanbul. The results were read aloud by coalition member Hisham Marwa to applause from a few dozen of his colleagues who had waited until after 1 a.m. to hear the results.

"I miss my wife and children and I look forward to seeing them soon," said Hitto, who has lived in the United States for decades and recently moved from Texas to Turkey to help coordinate aid to rebel-held areas.

When asked what his interim government's first priority would be, Hitto said he planned to give a speech later Tuesday outlining his plans.

Coalition members hope the new government will unite the rebels fighting Assad's forces on the ground and provide services to Syrians living in rebel-held areas, many of which have been battered by the country's civil war and suffer acute shortages of food, electricity and medical services.

But the new government faces huge challenges, starting with its ability to gain recognition from rebel factions on the ground.

As rebels have progressed in northern and eastern Syria, a patchwork of rebel groups and local councils have sought to fill the void left by the government's withdrawal by organizing security patrols, reopening bakeries and running courts and prisons. It is unclear if these groups, many of which have taken charge of their own towns, will accept an outside authority, especially if it is headed by someone who has spent decades abroad.

"How can a civilian come and tell these fighters on the ground, 'Drop your weapons. It's my turn to rule'?" asked Adib Shishakly, the coalition's representative to a group of Gulf nations known as the Gulf Cooperation Council, before the results were announced.

Hitto's election follows two failed attempts to form interim governments due to opposition infighting. Coalition members also say they received insufficient international support to allow them to project their authority to groups inside Syria. The new government could have the same problem.

"You have to find a way to cooperate with these groups and you can only rule by providing services, which requires funding," Shishakly said.

The council's creation of an interim government renders even more remote the chances of ending the war through negotiations with Assad's government — the preferred solution of the U.S. and other world powers.

The U.S. has been cool to the idea of a rebel government to rival Assad's and supports a peace plan put forward by the U.N. and the Arab League that calls for the formation of a transitional government that represents both the regime and the opposition.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday reiterated his call for a political solution "while there is still time to prevent Syria's complete destruction."

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also said the Obama administration wants to leave the door open for a political solution. Regarding the rebels, he also said the U.S. would not "stand in the way of other countries that made a decision to provide arms, whether it's France or Britain or others."

French President Francois Hollande said last week that his country and Britain were pushing the European Union to lift its arms embargo on Syria so they can arm the rebels. Germany and other EU nations oppose the move, saying it will exacerbate the violence.

Coalition members in Istanbul rejected the idea of negotiating with the Syrian government before Assad leaves power.

"We've heard a lot about this 'peaceful solution,' but there are no positive, real steps from the regime," said Nizar Al Hrakey, a coalition member.

On Monday, the head of Syria's largest official rebel group, the Free Syrian Army, threw his weight behind the idea of an interim government.

"We consider it the only legal government in the country," Gen. Salim Idris told reporters in Istanbul.

However, Idris's authority within the country remains limited, with some of the most successful rebel groups on the ground rejecting his authority.

The Syrian government did not immediately comment on the Istanbul meeting. It blames the war on a foreign conspiracy to weaken Syria being carried out by terrorists on the ground.

Hitto did not receive a resounding mandate from the coalition, of which he is not a member. Of the group's 63 active members, only 48 voted. Four cast blank ballots and Hitto received 35 of the remaining votes.

Hitto was born in Damascus, the Syrian capital, in 1963, according to his official resume provided by the coalition. Little known in Syria, he has lived in the United States for more than two decades, most recently in Texas. He has academic degrees from Purdue University in Indiana and Indiana Wesleyan University.

He worked for a number of different technology companies and helped run a Muslim private school called the Brighter Horizons Academy. He is also a founding member of the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which was founded to give legal aid to Muslims following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

He is married with four children.

Activist Ghassan Yassin, who watched the vote after traveling from the embattled city of Aleppo, said he saw "no reasons to be optimistic about the formation of an interim government."

Yassin said he had only heard of Hitto recently and doubted his government would have the resources to make a difference.

"The question is not whether there is an interim government, but whether there will be any support for it," Yassin said.

Syria's conflict began with political protests in March 2011, and has since spiraled into a civil war, with hundreds of rebel groups fighting Assad's forces across the country. The U.N. says more than 70,000 people have been killed and millions pushed from their homes by the violence.

Also on Monday, Assad's fighter jets struck targets near the town of Arsal, Lebanon, according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency. The two countries share a porous border.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Syrian warplanes and helicopters had fired rockets into northern Lebanon, striking near Arsal.

"This constitutes a significant escalation in the violations of Lebanese sovereignty that the Syrian regime has been guilty of," Nuland said. "These kinds of violations of sovereignty are absolutely unacceptable.'

___

Associated Press writer Bradley S. Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.

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Henrique Capriles to repeat run as opposition candidate in Venezuela election

CARACAS, Venezuela –  Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles announced Sunday night that he will run in elections to replace Hugo Chavez, setting up a make-or-break encounter against the late president's hand-picked successor.

Capriles slammed the government in his announcement for using Chavez's death to push the candidacy of Nicolas Maduro, who was sworn in as acting leader Friday. He also called top military brass an "embarrassment" for publicly supporting Maduro, although the constitution forbids the military from taking political sides.

"Don't fool yourselves that you're the good and we're the bad," the 40-year-old candidate said to the government. "No, you're no better than us. I don't play with death. I don't play with pain."

Capriles, who is governor of Venezuela's biggest state, also acknowledged that he faces tough odds against an official candidate in control of vast public resources who he said has the backing of the country's electoral commission.

"As one person said today, `Capriles, they are taking you to a slaughterhouse. Are you going to be lowered into its meat grinder?"' Capriles said.

He said, however, that he had to fight for the whole country.

"How am I not going to fight?" he said. "How are we not going to fight? This is not Capriles' fight. This is everybody's fight."

In some districts of the capital, people launched fireworks, shouted and honked horns as Capriles announced he would run.

Capriles also laid out what could be main themes of his campaign, bemoaning high crime and poverty as well as the government's decision to devalue the currency by more than 30 percent.

National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello sent a response on his Twitter account: "Capriles, you messed with Chavez and with the profound love that the people feel for the Commander of the Fatherland, you made a declaration of war."

Venezuela's election commission has set the vote for April 14, with formal campaigning to start just 12 days earlier.

Maduro has already announced his intention to run as the candidate of Chavez's socialist party. On Sunday he also picked up the support of Venezuela's small communist party. He's expected to file election papers on Monday.

In a speech accepting the communist party's nomination, Maduro insisted he was running for president out of loyalty to Chavez, not vanity or personal ambition, and called on the people to support him. Chavez chose him as vice president after winning re-election October.

"I am not Chavez," Maduro said, wearing a simple red shirt. "In terms of intelligence, charisma, historical force, or capacity to lead. ... But I am a Chavista and I live and die for him."

Opposition critics have called Maduro's ascension unconstitutional, noting the charter designates the National Assembly president as acting leader if a president-elect cannot be sworn in.

Capriles faced a stark choice in deciding whether to compete in the vote, which most analysts say he is sure to lose amid a frenzy of sympathy and mourning for the dead president.

Some say a second defeat for Capriles just six months after he lost last year's presidential vote to Chavez could derail his political career. But staying on the sidelines would have put in jeopardy his leadership of the opposition.

Analysts predict the next five weeks will see a spike in the nasty, heated rhetoric that began even before Chavez's death Tuesday after a nearly two-year fight with cancer.

Political consultant Oswaldo Ramirez, who is advising the Capriles campaign, said the candidate must strike a balance between criticizing the failures of Chavez's government and Maduro's role in it, without being seen as attacking the late president.

"He can't speak badly of Chavez, because this feeling on the street is still in full bloom," Ramirez said.

Public opinion was as divided as always Sunday in a country that became dramatically more polarized during Chavez's 14-year rule.

"It's not fair," said Jose Mendez, a 54-year-old businessman of the choice the opposition leader faces. "(Maduro) has an advantage, because of everything they have done since Chavez's death, all the sentiment they've created ... But the guy has nothing. He can't hold a candle to Chavez."

But Ramon Romero said the opposition was just making excuses, and had no chance of victory in any case.

"Now their odds are even worse," said the 64-year-old waiter and staunch Chavez supporter. "They don't care about anyone, and we (the voters) have been lifted out of darkness."

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