US sends troops to Jordan-Syria border

The United States has sent military troops to the Jordan-Syria border to bolster that country’s military capabilities in the event that violence escalates along its border with Syria, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday. The Register-Guard reported.

Speaking at a NATO conference of defense ministers in Brussels, Panetta said the United States has been working with Jordan to monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria and also to help Jordan deal with refugees pouring over the border from Syria. The troops are also building a headquarters for themselves.

But the revelation of US military personnel so close to the 19-month-old Syrian conflict suggests an escalation in the US military involvement in the conflict, even as Washington pushes back on any suggestion of a direct intervention in Syria.
It also follows several days of shelling between Turkey and Syria, an indication that the civil war could spill across Syria’s borders and become a regional conflict.

“We have a group of our forces there working to help build a headquarters there and to insure that we make the relationship between the United States and Jordan a strong one so that we can deal with all the possible consequences of what’s happening in Syria,” Panetta said.

The development comes with the U.S. presidential election less than a month away, and at a time when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has been criticizing President Obama’s foreign policy, accusing the administration of embracing too passive a stance in the convulsive Mideast region.

The defense secretary and other administration officials have expressed concern about Syrian President Bashar Assad’s arsenal of chemical weapons. Panetta said last week that the United States believes that while the weapons are still secure, intelligence suggests the regime might have moved the weapons to protect them. The Obama administration has said that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would be a “red line” that would change the US policy of providing only non-lethal aid to the rebels seeking to topple him.