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Nobody Does It Better: Galway welcomes Ocean Race

Rebel fighters with the Free Syrian Army, a loose federation of militias across the country, at a house in Aleppo on Tuesday.

 

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New Weapons Push Syrian Crisis Toward Civil War

By MARK LANDLER and NEIL MacFARQUHAR

WASHINGTON — With evidence that powerful new weapons are flowing to both the Syrian government and opposition fighters, the bloody uprising in Syria has thrust the Obama administration into an increasingly difficult position as the conflict shows signs of mutating into a full-fledged civil war.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Tuesday that the United States believed that Russia was shipping attack helicopters to Syria that President Bashar al-Assad could use to escalate his government’s deadly crackdown on civilians and the militias battling his rule. Her comments reflected rising frustration with Russia, which has continued to supply weapons to its major Middle Eastern ally despite an international outcry over the government’s brutal crackdown.

“We have confronted the Russians about stopping their continued arms shipments to Syria,” Mrs. Clinton said at an appearance with President Shimon Peres of Israel. “They have, from time to time, said that we shouldn’t worry; everything they’re shipping is unrelated to their actions internally. That’s patently untrue.”

Russia insists that it provides Damascus only with weapons that can be used in self-defense.

In the latest reports from the front lines of the swirling conflict, the activist Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said on Wednesday that rebel forces had pulled out of villages around the besieged northwestern town of Al Heffa, where on Tuesday a team of United Nations cease-fire monitors retreated when hostile crowds struck their vehicles with stones and metal rods, said a spokeswoman.

“The shelling has been continuous,” said Houran al-Hafawi, a member of the local coordination committee of Al Heffa said on Tuesday. “The Syrian Army is throwing missiles and rockets from helicopter and rocket launchers from the eastern and western entrances.”

The withdrawal from Al Heffa raised speculation that the town would be retaken by loyalist forces after the days of shelling. It is difficult to verify such activist reports of developments on the ground since reporters have difficulty in working freely in Syria.

As fighting intensified across Syria on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that more than 60 people had been killed in the fighting, one-third of them government soldiers, while the United Nations released a report saying that Syrians as young as 8 had been deployed by government soldiers and pro-government militia members as human shields.

The fierce government assaults from the air are partly a response to improved tactics and weaponry among the opposition forces, which have recently received more powerful antitank missiles from Turkey, with the financial support of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to members of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, and other activists.

The United States, these activists said, was consulted about these weapons transfers. Officials in Washington said the United States did not take part in arms shipments to the rebels, though they recognized that Syria’s neighbors would do so, and that it was important to ensure that weapons did not end up in the hands of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

The increased ferocity of the attacks and the more lethal weapons on both sides threatened to overwhelm diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. Kofi Annan, the special envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League, continued to pressure Damascus to halt the violence and to respect a cease-fire. But Mrs. Clinton said that if Mr. Assad did not stop the violence by mid-July, the United Nations would have little choice but to end its observer mission in the country.

Mrs. Clinton, State Department officials said, continues to push for a “managed transition,” under which Mr. Assad would step aside. Russia’s role is viewed as critical, however, and Mrs. Clinton’s claims about helicopter shipments are certain to increase tensions with Moscow less than a week before President Obama is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin at a summit meeting in Mexico.

Administration officials declined to give details about the helicopters, saying the information was classified. But Pentagon sources suggested that Mrs. Clinton, in her remarks at a Brookings Institution event, was referring to a Russian-made attack helicopter that Syria already owns but has not yet deployed to crack down on opposition forces. While these helicopters, known as Mi-24s, are flown by Syrian pilots, Russia supplies spare parts and provides maintenance for them.

A Pentagon spokesman, Capt. John Kirby, said the precise status of the helicopters was not as important as the violence being directed against opponents of the Syrian government. “The focus really needs to be more on what the Assad regime is doing to its own people than the cabinets and the closets to which they turn to pull stuff out.” Captain Kirby said. “It’s really about what they’re doing with what they’ve got in their hand.”

The use of helicopters is contributing to a growing sense that, as Hervé Ladsous, the head of United Nations peacekeeping operations, put it, the fighting could be characterized as a civil war.

“The government of Syria lost some large chunks of territories and several cities to the opposition and wants to retake control of these areas,” Mr. Ladsous said at the United Nations. “So now we have confirmed reports not only of the use of tanks and artillery, but also attack helicopters.”

Opposition leaders are wary of the term civil war because it suggests that the conflict is somehow an even match.

“Civil war will not come suddenly in one day or two or five, but you have to look how things are gradually changing on the ground,” said Samir Nachar, a member of the executive committee of the Syrian National Council. “Can you say to people, ‘Don’t defend yourselves?’ It is impossible.”

Council members on Tuesday were also wary of reading too much into Mrs. Clinton’s claim, suggesting that it was an open secret for months that the Russians were supplying weapons to Syria. There have been repeated reports of Russian armament ships docking in Syria, although Moscow has always denied that they were carrying the arms used to suppress the protests.

Speaking in Istanbul, council members also described efforts to supply the opposition with arms, specifically antitank weaponry delivered by Turkish Army vehicles to the Syrian border, where it was then transferred to smugglers who took it into Syria.

Turkey has repeatedly denied that it is giving anything other than humanitarian aid to the opposition, mostly at refugee camps near the border. It has recently made those camps harder to visit: permission was not granted to two reporters in the vicinity for five days last week. Turkey did not act alone, but with financial support from Qatar and Saudi Arabia and after consultation with the United States, said these officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s diplomatic delicacy.

The more powerful weapons have been delivered as far south as the suburbs of Damascus, but not into Damascus itself, they said. The presence of the antitank missiles seems to have made government forces hesitant to move their tanks around urban centers, according to sources in the Syrian National Council. But they have done nothing to stem the violence.

For the Pentagon, the debate over Russia’s rearming of Syria took an odd twist on Tuesday when Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, complained that the United States military was buying attack helicopters for Afghan security forces from the same Russian weapons company supplying the Assad government.

George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, defended the purchases of the Mi-17 helicopters from the Russian company, Rosoboronexport, as important to helping Afghanistan create a credible self-defense force, and said the issue was separate from the concern over arms shipments to Syria that were used by the government to kill civilians.

“It’s about equipping the Afghan air force with what they need to ensure that they have the capabilities from an air standpoint to defend themselves,” Mr. Little said.

Copyright. 2012. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

 

President Obama arrived by Marine One on Tuesday afternoon to attend three fund-raisers in the Baltimore area.

 

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2 Campaigns Chasing Funds at Frantic Pace

By ASHLEY PARKER and HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — President Obama wooed campaign donors in speed-dating fashion on Tuesday, rushing through six fund-raisers in six hours in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Thursday will find him in Manhattan, where he will join Anna Wintour at the home of Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick for a $40,000-a-plate dinner, followed by another high-dollar gathering at the Plaza Hotel.

Mitt Romney has been jetting around the country making frequent stops in states that will not be battlegrounds this fall — California, Texas, Utah and New York among them — in a search for donations. In coming weeks, he has events scheduled in wealthy enclaves from Aspen, Colo., and Jackson Hole, Wyo., to the Hamptons, and he is planning a late-summer fund-raising blitz heading into the conventions.

With the primary season over, the presidential campaign has entered a new phase, one dictated by the competitive realities of the deregulated campaign finance system. Having decided not to take public financing for the general election, both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney need to devote much of their time to banking the money necessary to fuel their campaigns through Election Day.

This election cycle marks the completion of a gradual shift away from the days when candidates would be able to wrap up fund-raising on their own behalf ahead of their conventions in the middle of the summer and rely on public financing — which limits candidates to a preset expenditure level — for the general election.

Mr. Obama rejected public financing in his 2008 race to free himself to spend as much as he could raise, and this year he will be the first sitting president to do so. Mr. Romney and his allies appear to be on track to raise even more money than Mr. Obama and his backers. In May, the Romney campaign collected more than $76.8 million, nearly $17 million more than the president.

So there was Mr. Obama on Tuesday afternoon, hopscotching through three fund-raisers in the Baltimore area before running up to Philadelphia for three more in the evening. Mr. Romney was holding a fund-raiser in Tennessee on Tuesday night, after raising money this week in Georgia and Florida.

Both candidates are spending more time at this point chasing dollars than votes and are scheduling their travel accordingly, meaning they often find themselves in states they are almost sure to win or sure to lose rather than in those where they most need to persuade the undecided.

“Now that the candidates have opted out of public funding, the spending limits that came with public money are no more, so they are free to fund-raise as much as they feel they need to,” said Brendan J. Doherty, a political science professor at the Naval Academy whose book “The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign,” which will be released next month, chronicles the increase in fund-raising.

“The summer was still a fund-raising race for Bill Clinton in 1996 even though he participated in public funding, but his fund-raising race was just for the Democratic National Committee,” Professor Doherty said. “Now there are no limits on what the campaign itself can raise and spend, and without those limits, which had held down the amount of time a president could spend fund-raising, it’s off to the races.”

Mr. Obama in particular is under pressure to accelerate his fund-raising to keep pace with Mr. Romney’s team and the conservative “super PACs” that are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign. But Republicans, even as they celebrate their own fund-raising advantage, are trying to make Mr. Obama’s exertions a political issue, suggesting that he is not paying enough attention to his job, is spending excessive time with wealthy Hollywood stars and New York glitterati and has lost touch with the economic concerns of ordinary people.

“The president needs to go out and talk to people, not just do fund-raisers, go out and talk to people in the country and find out what is happening,” Mr. Romney said in Florida on Tuesday.

Professor Doherty said Mr. Obama had so far held 160 fund-raisers for his re-election. By contrast, President George W. Bush had attended 79 fund-raisers by this point in his 2004 re-election race, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who has tracked years of presidential travel. While Mr. Bush opted out of public financing for the primary season in 2004, he accepted public financing for the general election, reducing his need to raise money.

There are no comprehensive figures for Mr. Romney’s attendance at fund-raisers, some of which have not been included on his public schedule.

Some Democrats acknowledged that the Obama campaign has been surprised at lagging the Republican fund-raising totals. But they said Mr. Obama could employ the bully pulpit to offset some of the financial disadvantage. And his campaign rejected Mr. Romney’s criticism that fund-raisers have left Mr. Obama out of touch.

“While we’ve used opportunities to get supporters involved in the campaign who may not otherwise have been involved in the political process, Mitt Romney personally courted Kid Rock and has campaigned time and again with Birther-in-Chief Donald Trump,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign.

One way the Democrats are trying to compete with the Republican fund-raising apparatus is by partnering with Democratic-leaning independent groups. Priorities USA, a pro-Obama super PAC, and the Service Employees International Union on Monday announced plans for a $4 million, Spanish-language advertising campaign in the swing states of Colorado, Florida and Nevada. The group has also partnered with the League of Conservation Voters and the United Auto Workers.

Though Democratic super PACs have struggled to compete with their Republican counterparts, Bill Burton, a co-founder of Priorities USA, said that teaming up with similarly minded groups allows them to spend their money more efficiently and promote a coordinated message.

“That’s the biggest strategy for us to leverage every dollar into three or four dollars,” Mr. Burton said. “You leverage for more resources, but you also help to keep the Democratically aligned independent groups on message.”

Last week, Mr. Romney two-stepped his way across Texas — a reliably red state he expects to win in November — along with stops in Portland, Ore., Salt Lake City and St. Louis. And the week before, he spent much of his free time fund-raising in California, which last voted for a Republican president in 1988. His California swing was a four-day affair that included only one public event.

Given the news coverage that follows him wherever he goes, Mr. Obama can continue to inject his message into the daily news cycle even as he raises money. Mr. Romney lacks that advantage and often conducts fund-raisers that allow little or no news coverage, forcing his campaign to rely more on surrogates and his super PAC to deliver attacks on Mr. Obama and carry a pro-Romney message.

Two weeks ago, when the latest jobs report showed disappointing growth, bolstering Mr. Romney’s economic argument against Mr. Obama, Mr. Romney’s campaign was caught in the awkward position of having its only event that day being a fund-raiser from which television cameras were barred. His campaign scrambled to add an interview on CNBC, for Mr. Romney to address the news.

Copyright 2012. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

 

Michel Euler/Associated Press

Rafael Nadal at the French Open on Monday.

 

 

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Nadal Wins Seventh French Open Title

By GREG BISHOP

PARIS — Knees covered in clay, eyes wide and mouth agape, Rafael Nadal scaled the railing at Roland Garros and sprinted up the stands. His family stood waiting for him, and Nadal hugged them, one after another, until he came to his coach, his uncle Toni, who lifted his nephew off the ground.

The occasion called for an exaggerated celebration, for the history Nadal secured, for not just his latest French Open title but his seventh one. Over the years, dozens of men’s champions have conquered the famous red clay here and held the silver championship trophy above their head. But none had triumphed a seventh time — until Monday.

The final lasted for two days, through two rain delays, through wind that whirled and rain that spit and poured, for four tension-filled sets. It featured the usual suspects, Nadal, of Spain, and Novak Djokovic of Serbia, rivals who also met in the finals of the three previous Grand Slam events.

It took Nadal a split-second to realize the match had ended, after Djokovic’s second serve landed behind the line. The final score was 6-4, 6-3, 2-6, 7-5. It was Nadal’s 11th Grand Slam singles title and his 50th career ATP World Tour-level singles championship, but on Monday only one number really mattered.

Lucky No. 7.

There was little luck involved, of course. There never is with Nadal on clay. In victory, he ran his record at Roland Garros to 52-1 and provided more evidence for the argument that he is the greatest clay-court player ever.

While it remains difficult to compare players from different eras, even those who believe Bjorn Borg deserves the mythical clay championship belt must now concede that Nadal has won more French Opens (seven and counting, to six). This gives Nadal a statistical edge, if nothing else. Of course, Borg retired at 26, the age Nadal turned last week.

“He’s definitely the best player in history on this surface, and the results are showing he is one of the best ever players that played this game,” Djokovic said afterward.

There are supposed to be no certainties in sports, no absolutes. Then there is Nadal on clay courts, where victory is all but guaranteed.

For two weeks, Nadal insisted this French Open meant no more to him than any other, as if he was trying to banish the prospect of history from his mind. Djokovic, too, had more than a trophy to play for, as a championship would have marked his fourth consecutive major title, a Grand Slam albeit not in the same year. Rod Laver, in 1969, was the last man to hold all four titles simultaneously.

Nadal said he felt anxious throughout the night after play was suspended Sunday in the fourth set. He remained that way three hours before play resumed. He felt the same two hours before. And one hour before. In fact, Nadal said he did not feel ready until three minutes before what was essentially the second half.

“I was more nervous than usual,” he said.

Through his first six matches, Nadal won 71 of 72 service games and lost 35 games total, the least in a major tournament since Borg lost 31 games before the final in 1981. Nadal befuddled and battered some of the best players in the world, all of whom lost to him and shrugged. As he closed in on the record, even his uncle seemed surprised.

“Always,” Toni Nadal said in a quiet moment in the players’ lounge last week. “When Rafael won his first Monte Carlo, was unbelievable. When he won here, I felt the same. Now six times here, maybe seven, I don’t believe. I can’t believe that.”

The first two sets of the final featured the same Nadal, he of the heavy topspin forehand lassoed past opponents, the prohibitive favorite for good reason. Then the rain started. Then Djokovic surged back into the match as Nadal argued with the chair umpire and tournament officials — the same ones who later handed him the trophy.

They stopped play eventually, later than he liked, with Nadal behind, 2-1, in the fourth set. The game he won in that stanza snapped an eight-game losing streak, and Nadal noted Monday the importance that one seemingly insignificant game ultimately held.

The grounds were eerily empty Monday morning, almost like a ghost town, in the first non-Sunday final here since 1973. Shortly after 1 p.m., the players walked from the locker room to the court for the fourth time. They took the same awkward prematch photo, under the same clouds, wearing shirts of the same color. Unfortunately for Djokovic, the same Nadal who started the match Sunday also resurfaced a day later.

Nadal broke Djokovic’s serve in the first game, as Djokovic banged his head with his racket, the score tied, 2-2. With Nadal ahead, 5-4, Djokovic held serve to remain in the match, and when it started raining, it looked as if he might get another much-needed break, same as Nadal the night before.

He did not, not for more than a few minutes. Play resumed. Nadal led, 6-5, when Djokovic sailed a forehand long for 30-30. “Novak! Novak! Novak!” the crowd chanted, with Nadal two points from the title. Nadal slung three consecutive stinging forehands on the next point, each farther from Djokovic, the last completely out of reach. The last point was anticlimactic; history sealed on a double fault.

In defeat, Djokovic did not blame the overnight delay, which derailed his momentum. He did not blame the fan who screamed before the second-to-last serve. Instead, he credited Nadal, as the debate started anew: best clay-court player ever? Nadal? Or Borg?

Justin Gimelstob, a Tennis Channel analyst, said last week that Nadal would go down as the greatest clay-court player.

“By the time he’s done it’ll be borderline unimaginable what he racks up on clay,” Gimelstob said.

Nadal declined to weigh in on the debate afterward. He said he did not know “if I am the best or not.” He added, “I’m not the right one to say that.”

Regardless, his rivalry with Djokovic figures to continue. As does the so-called Big Three — these two and Roger Federer — divvying up the foreseeable Grand Slam events. (They have won 28 of the last 29.)

One trend, though, seems safer than the others, and that is Nadal’s continued dominance on his favorite surface. Nadal is to clay as Michael Phelps is to water, as Michael Jordan is to hardwood.

A record seven trophies can attest to that.

Copyright. 2012. The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved