Syria risks "dissolution", U.N. chief says

Reuters/Reuters - U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addresses participants during the signing ceremony of the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes, at the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa Feburary 24, 2013. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri

GENEVA (Reuters) - Syria will fall apart if its government and rebels keep fighting instead of seeking a negotiated peace, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday.

He said the situation in Syria was deteriorating by the day after almost two years of conflict in which 70,000 people have died, but there was now a slim chance for peace talks.

"This is a very small window of opportunity which we strongly support and encourage them to use that. The opportunity may soon close," Ban said at a news conference in Geneva.

Syria's government has shown increased willingness to hold talks with the opposition to end a war that has driven nearly 1 million Syrians to flee their country.

Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on Monday the government would even speak to armed rebels. On Thursday it extended passport terms for Syrian nationals abroad, meeting a condition set by the opposition for talks.

Delivering an annual lecture in Geneva later on Friday, the U.N. chief said:

"I continue to urge the Syrian parties to find their way to the negotiating table. The horrors of the last months and years prove beyond doubt: the military solution in Syria is leading to the dissolution of Syria."

"The Security Council must no longer stand as a silent witness to the slaughter. At long last, it must come together and establish the parameters for the democratic transition that might be the last best hope for saving Syria," he said.

Russia has blocked U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at forcing an end to the conflict and insists the exit of President Bashar al-Assad from power must not be a precondition for a negotiated solution.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin cautiously welcomed a suggestion from French leader Francois Hollande that dialogue on Syria be broadened to bring in parties that could act as negotiators between Assad and opposition rebels.

"I am urging again the Security Council and regional leaders and the people of Syria to unite themselves to address this issue," Ban told reporters.

"In just about two weeks time, we will be entering the third year of this crisis. How long (do) we have to see the people killed and displaced in this way?"

He said he would meet his Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi at an Alpine retreat in Switzerland on Saturday for private talks along with senior aides.

"There's not much political space... I cannot give you any guarantee or a deadline or any future meetings," he said.

For now, in the absence of a political resolution, humanitarian assistance must be increased, he added.

(Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

Vegas fugitive arrested at Los Angeles apartment

A day after his administration filed a friend-of-the-court brief unequivocally calling on the justices to strike down California's Proposition 8 ballot measure, Obama said he felt there was no way for his administration to avoid the case.

"I felt it was important for us to articulate what I believe and what this administration stands for," the president said.

The nation has gone through the same evolution he has gone through about how gay couples should be treated under the law, said Obama, who once opposed gay marriage but changed his position last year during his re-election campaign.

"I think this is a profoundly positive thing," Obama said in a White House news conference.

The administration's brief outlined a broad legal argument that could ultimately be applied to other state prohibitions across the country, but stops short of the soaring rhetoric on marriage equality Obama expressed in his inaugural address in January.

Still, it marks the first time a U.S. president has urged the high court to expand the right of gays and lesbians to wed.

Obama said the brief didn't explicitly argue that gay marriage should be made legal in every state because the case before the court deals specifically with California.

"That's an argument that I make, personally," Obama said. "The court may decide that if it doesn't apply in this case, it probably can't apply in any case. There no good reason for it."

The brief is not legally binding, though the government's opinion could carry weight with the Supreme Court when it hears oral arguments on Proposition 8 in late March.

California is one of eight states that give gay couples all the benefits of marriage through civil unions or domestic partnership but don't allow them to wed. The brief argues that in granting same-sex couples those rights, California has already acknowledged that gay relationships bear the same hallmarks as straight ones.

"They establish homes and lives together, support each other financially, share the joys and burdens of raising children, and provide care through illness and comfort at the moment of death," the administration wrote.

The brief marks the president's most expansive view of gay marriage and signals that he is moving away from his previous assertion that states should determine their own marriage laws. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, signed off on the administration's legal argument last week following lengthy discussions with Attorney General Eric Holder and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

In a statement following the filing, Holder said "the government seeks to vindicate the defining constitutional ideal of equal treatment under the law."

Obama's position, if adopted by the court, would likely result in gay marriage becoming legal in the seven other states: Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island.

In the longer term, the administration urges the justices to subject laws that discriminate on sexual orientation to more rigorous review than usual, as is the case for claims that laws discriminate on the basis of race, sex and other factors.

The Supreme Court has never given gay Americans the special protection it has afforded women and minorities. If it endorses such an approach in the gay marriage cases, same-sex marriage bans around the country could be imperiled.

Despite the potentially wide-ranging implications of the administration's brief, it still falls short of what gay rights advocates and the attorneys who will argue against Proposition 8 had hoped for. Those parties had pressed the president to urge the Supreme Court to not only overturn California's ban, but also declare all gay marriage bans unconstitutional.

Still, marriage equality advocates publicly welcomed the president's legal positioning.

"Obama again asserted a bold claim of full equality for gay Americans, this time in a legal brief," said Richard Socarides, an attorney and advocate. "If its full weight and reasoning are accepted by the Supreme Court, all anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendments will fall, and quickly."

The National Organization for Marriage, a leading supporter of the California ban, rejected Obama's arguments. Spokesman Thomas Peters said he expects the Supreme Court to uphold the votes of more than 7 million Californians to protect marriage, spokesman Thomas Peters said.

The president raised expectations that he would back a broad brief during his inaugural address on Jan. 21. He said the nation's journey "is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law."

"For if we are truly created equal, than surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well," he added.

Obama has a complicated history on gay marriage. As a presidential candidate in 2008, he opposed the California ban but didn't endorse gay marriage. He later said his personal views on gay marriage were "evolving."

When he ran for re-election last year, Obama announced his personal support for same-sex marriage but said marriage was an issue that states, not the federal government, should decide.

Public opinion has also shifted in support of gay marriage in recent years.

In May 2008, Gallup found that 56 percent of Americans felt same-sex marriages should not be recognized by the law as valid. By last November, 53 percent felt they should be legally recognized.

Gay marriage supporters see the Supreme Court's hearing of Proposition 8, as well as a related case on the Defense of Marriage Act, as a potential watershed moment for same-sex unions.

In a well-coordinated effort, opponents of the California ban flooded the justices with friend-of-the-court briefs in recent days.

Among those filing briefs were 13 states, including four that do not now permit gay couples to wed, and more than 100 prominent Republicans, including GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman and Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Two professional football players who have been outspoken gay rights advocates also filed a brief in the California case. Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo urged the court to rule in favor of same-sex marriage.

The Supreme Court has several options to decide the case that would be narrower than what the administration is asking. The justices also could uphold the California provision, as opponents of gay marriage are urging.

One day after the Supreme Court hears the California case, the justices will hear arguments on provisions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman for the purpose of deciding who can receive a range of federal benefits.

The administration abandoned its defense of the act in 2011, but the measure will continue to be federal law unless it is struck down or repealed.

In a brief filed last week, the government said Section 3 of the act "violates the fundamental constitutional guarantee of equal protection" because it denies legally married same-sex couples many federal benefits that are available only to legally married heterosexual couples.

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U.S.D.A. May Approve Horse Slaughter Plant

Horse meat plant in U.S. likely to be approved The last time a plant that slaughtered horses for human consumption was open in the U.S. was 2007. How safe is it?

The United States Department of Agriculture is likely to approve a horse slaughtering plant in New Mexico in the next two months, which would allow equine meat suitable for human consumption to be produced in the United States for the first time since 2007.

The plant, in Roswell, N.M., is owned by Valley Meat Company, which sued the U.S.D.A. and its Food Safety and Inspection Service last fall over the lack of inspection services for horses going to slaughter. Horse meat cannot be processed for human consumption in the United States without inspection by the U.S.D.A., so horses destined for that purpose have been shipped to places like Mexico and Canada for slaughter.

Justin DeJong, a spokesman for the agriculture department, said that “several” companies had asked the agency to re-establish inspection of horses for slaughter. “These companies must still complete necessary technical requirements and the F.S.I.S. must complete its inspector training,” he wrote in an e-mail referring to the food inspection service.

He said the Obama administration was urging Congress to reinstate an effective ban on the production of horse meat for human consumption that lapsed in 2011.

The impending approval comes amid growing concern among American consumers that horse meat will somehow make its way into ground beef products in the United States as it has done in Europe. Major companies, including Tesco, Nestlé and Ikea, have had to pull food from shelves in 14 countries after tests showed that products labeled 100 percent beef actually contained small amounts of horse meat. Horse meat is not necessarily unsafe, and in some countries, it is popular. But some opponents of horse slaughtering say consumption of horse meat is ill-advised because of the use of various kinds of drugs in horses.

“We now have the very real prospect of a horse slaughtering plant operating in the U.S. for the first time in six years,” said Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States. The last plant that slaughtered horse meat for human consumption in the United States closed in 2007, after Congressional approval of an appropriations bill that included a rider forbidding the U.S.D.A. from financing the inspection of such meat. That rider was renewed in subsequent appropriations bills until 2011, when Congress quietly removed it from an omnibus spending act.

That opened the door for a renewal of the horse slaughter business, but only if the U.S.D.A. re-established inspections. The agency never moved to restart its equine inspection service.

Valley Meat sued Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, and Al Almanza, the head of the food safety inspection service, charging that the department’s failure to offer inspection of horse meat violated the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

That law directs the agriculture department to appoint inspectors to examine “all amenable species” before they enter a slaughtering facility.

“Amenable species” were animals subject to the act the day before it was enacted, including cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, horses and mules.

A. Blair Dunn, the lawyer for Valley Meat, said that the Justice Department recently asked the company for an additional 60 days to file a response to its lawsuit. Mr. Dunn said the Justice Department indicated it was asking for the extra time because “the U.S.D.A. plans to issue a grant of inspection within that time, which would allow my clients to begin operations.” Mr. Dunn said that Valley Meat had hired experts in the humane treatment of horses for slaughter and was training employees. The company is not planning to sell meat in the United States, at least at the outset of its operations. “Last spring, they were in discussions with several companies in European countries about exporting their products,” he said of his clients. “I’m sure if markets do develop in this country for horse meat for human consumption, they will look at them.”

He cautioned that Valley Meat might still face challenges to opening, noting that several parties had filed briefs on both sides of the case. The Humane Society has petitioned the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration to delay approval of any facility for horse slaughter, raising questions about the presence of drugs like phenylbutazone, which is used to treat inflammation in horses.

Conversely, R-CALF USA, an organization representing about 5,000 family cattle ranching operations, has filed a brief supporting Valley Meat’s legal case. Bill Bullard, its chief executive, said his members needed horse slaughtering facilities to humanely dispose of the horses they used in their businesses once they became old or incapacitated.

“Beginning in 2006, when inspections were temporarily prohibited, these U.S. horses continue to be slaughtered in foreign countries like Mexico and Canada,” Mr. Bullard said. “We believe the Mexicans do not adhere to the same humane standards as in the United States, and so some of our members won’t sell their horses.”

Mr. Pacelle said he had been surprised to see anyone from the beef industry supporting horse slaughter. “For the cattle industry, it is a self-destructive move, since the more horse meat that’s circulating, the greater the chance it will infiltrate the food supply and decrease consumer confidence in beef,” he said.