A day after Secretary Hillary Clinton asks for the Syrian's President resignation, he responds by reviewing his defense department.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (click here)  has urged Russia to stop supplying arms to Syria.   "We want to see Russia cease selling arms to the Assad regime," she said in a recent interview with the television network CBS. The export of Russian weapons to Iran and Libya has already been suspended, and now officials in Washington are raising the issue of Russia's arms sales to Syria. This is an extremely sensitive issue, even for such an inherently sensitive sector as military and technical cooperation. The business interests of Russian arms manufacturers and the Russian leadership's complex Middle East policy run up against the hard line of Israel and the United States. In recent years, Russian-Syrian military ties have often come under the barrage of criticism from Tel Aviv and Washington. Moscow has terminated some bilateral contracts in response, so as to avoid further tensions. One example is the contract for the Iskander E tactical missile system, which was cancelled in 2005.... And Russia opposes the USA position.   Syrian President replaces ailing defense minister: report (click title to entry - thank you)

2011-08-09 01:56:52

DAMASCUS, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad replaced his ailing defense minister on Monday in the context of recent shake-up covering a number of officials, the official SANA news agency reported.

Al-Assad has named Lt. Gen. Dawoud Bin Abdullah Rajha as the new defense minister replacing Ali Habib, said SANA, adding that the replacement came following a number of meetings with popular delegations and citizens.

Habib, 72, named as defense minister in 2009, was removed due to deteriorating health situation, said SANA.

Rajha, 64, a military college graduate, was head of a number of administrations and bodies of the armed forces before being appointed as deputy chief of staff in 2004. In 2009, he was named as the army's chief of staff.

Meanwhile, a military source said army units, entitled to bring back life to normalcy in the restive province of Hama in central Syria, have started evacuating the city after they "fulfilled a qualitative mission" there by protecting the lives of residents and tracking down armed and terrorist groups, which have brought life there to a standstill and committed a lot of sabotaging acts...