DEFENSE/SYRIA/TRUMP PEOPLE/JAMES MATTIS: “U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday [6-28-17] that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad appeared so far to have heeded a warning this week from Washington not to carry out a chemical weapons attack.
But Russia, the Syrian government’s main backer, said the U.S. assertions that Assad’s forces may have been planning a chemical attack complicated peace talks on ending Syria’s six-year-old civil war.
The White House said on Monday it appeared the Syrian military was preparing to conduct a chemical weapons attack said and Assad and his forces would ‘pay a heavy price’ if it did so.
U.S. officials later said the warning was based on intelligence that indicated preparations for such a strike were under way at Syria’s Shayrat airfield.
‘It appears that they took the warning seriously,’ Mattis said. ‘They didn’t do it,’ he told reporters flying with him to Brussels for a meeting of NATO defense ministers.
He offered no evidence other than the fact that an attack had not taken place.”
-Phil Stewart and David Alexander, “U.S. says its warning appears to have averted Syrian chemical attack,” Reuters, June 28, 2017 01:01pm