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{{Syria’s crisis will only be solved by stamping out “terror”, President Bashar al-Assad said on Sunday, in reference to rebels fighting his regime.}}

In a rare speech on Syrian state television, Assad also dismissed the political opposition to his regime as a “failure” that could play no role in solving the country’s brutal war.

“No solution can be reached with terror except by striking it with an iron fist,” said Assad.

“I don’t think that any sane human being would think that terrorism can be dealt with via politics,” he added.

“There may be a role for politics in dealing with terrorism pre-emptively,” said Assad, adding that as soon as “terrorism” has arisen, it can only be struck out.

In March 2011, a widespread protest movement calling for political change in Syria broke out.

In response, the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent, while systematically labelling dissidents and rebels as “terrorists” and refusing to recognise the existence of a popular revolt.

The movement later morphed into an increasingly radical insurgency and more than 100,000 people have since been killed, the UN says.

The war has also forced millions to flee their homes, while plunging Syria into an unprecedented economic crisis.

In his latest speech, Assad also said Syria’s economic woes “are linked to the security situation, and they can only be solved by striking terror”.

Assad’s speech comes a week after the army, backed by pro-regime paramilitary troops and Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah movement, reclaimed a strategic district of the central city of Homs, after a suffocating siege on rebels that lasted more than a year.

“In this kind of fight, we as Syrians either win together or lose together,” he said.

Assad also said that the army, untrained for guerrilla warfare, “has achieved the impossible”.

“There is only one kind of war that is bigger than guerrilla warfare, and that is a people’s war, one that is fought by the army alongside the citizens,” he said, adding that “the hand of God is with those who stand together”.

He meanwhile stressed the need to fight on against the rebellion.

“It is true that there is a battle being fought in the media and on (the Internet), but the crisis will only be solved on the battlefield,” said Assad in his 45-minute address.

He also said that any efforts towards a political solution should be combined with continued military operations.

“There cannot be any political efforts or political progress if terror is striking everywhere. Therefore terror must be struck in order to get the political process moving on the right track,” Assad said.

“That does not mean that there cannot be parallel tracks. There is no reason why we shouldn’t strike terror while at the same time working politically,” he added.

Assad’s comments come amid faltering efforts to push forward a US-Russian proposal for peace talks dubbed Geneva 2, which would see regime representatives and the opposition gathering for negotiations.

AFP

{{The United States extended embassy closures by a week in the Middle East and Africa as a precaution on Sunday after an al Qaeda threat that U.S. lawmakers said was the most serious in years.}}

The State Department said 19 U.S. embassies and consulates would be closed through Saturday “out of an abundance of caution” and that a number of them would have been closed anyway for most of the week due to the Eid celebration at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The United States initially closed 21 U.S. diplomatic posts for the day on Sunday. Some of those will reopen on Monday, including Kabul, Baghdad and Algiers.

Four new diplomatic posts – in Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius – were added to the closure list for the week.

Last week, the State Department issued a worldwide travel alert warning Americans that al Qaeda may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

“There is an awful lot of chatter out there,” U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He said the “chatter” – communications among terrorism suspects about the planning of a possible attack – was “very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.”

A National Security Agency surveillance program that electronically collects communications on cellphones and emails – known as intercepts – had helped gather intelligence about this threat, Chambliss said.

It was one of the NSA surveillance programs revealed by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden to media outlets.

Those programs “allow us to have the ability to gather this chatter,” Chambliss said. “If we did not have these programs then we simply wouldn’t be able to listen in on the bad guys.”

{wirestory}

{{Chinese bloggers trying to expose corruption say they are coming under increasing physical and verbal attack over their reports, in what anti-graft activists describe as another blow to efforts to make Chinese officials more accountable.}}

At least six self-styled whistleblowers have been assaulted or harassed in recent months, according to media reports, Internet postings and several of the bloggers who spoke to Reuters.

Two unidentified men stabbed blogger Li Jianxin in the face and splashed acid on his back on July 8. Li, now blind in his right eye, remains in hospital in the southern city of Huizhou.

The attacks coincide with a government crackdown on activists demanding officials disclose their wealth, underscoring the limits of an anti-corruption push by President Xi Jinping.

Xi, who became president in March, has called for action against graft, warning, as many Chinese leaders have before him, that the problem could threaten the ruling Communist Party’s survival.

“If President Xi Jinping is serious about fighting graft, then he should ensure that these individuals are protected from such intimidation and persecution,” said Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Xi has said the “supervision of the people” is needed to fight corruption.

Indeed, Li said he and other whistleblowers were encouraged when they heard officials discuss “public opinion-based oversight” of power during China’s annual parliament session in March. Li said he thought that meant the government wanted the Internet to be a tool to weed out corruption.

“It was like a boost to the heart,” Li, 45, told Reuters from his hospital bed where he awaits three more operations in addition to the three he has undergone.

“It signified that the nation’s leaders attach importance and support our anti-corruption efforts on the Internet.”

Li, who runs a small restaurant, began posting accusations of official misconduct, illegal land grabs and nepotism in the city of Huizhou in Guangdong province just over a year ago.

In March, someone tossed a brick through his daughter’s bedroom window. Li was not cowed.

“If they have the guts, they should take a gun and shoot me dead,” Li wrote in an online forum after that incident.

Li does not know who attacked him last month and police have not made any arrests. He vowed to continue his online reports.

The postings contain few documents to support his accusations and none of Li’s dozens of exposes have led to investigations. Much of his information comes from informants, Li said, adding he had never been sued for slander.

{reuters}