WASHINGTON: The United States is positioning military forces so that it can respond to unrest in as many as 17 or 18 places in the Islamic world, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta announced late Friday.
“We have to be prepared in the event that these demonstrations get out of control,” Panetta told Foreign Policy magazine.
He did not offer any specifics. But the magazine said that the Pentagon was discussing, but had not yet decided, whether to send a third platoon of 50 specially trained Marines to protect the US Embassy in Sudan that found itself on Friday under assault.
If approved, this deployment will follow the roughly 100 Marines that already have landed in Libya and Yemen.
In his weekly radio address yesterday, President Barack Obama rejected any denigration of Islam but said there is no excuse for attacks on US embassies, insisting he will never tolerate efforts to harm Americans.
“I have made it clear that the United States has a profound respect for people of all faiths,” Obama said in his weekly radio address. “Yet there is never any justification for violence …. There is no excuse for attacks on our embassies and consulates.”
Furious protesters targeted symbols of US influence in cities across the Muslim world yesterday, attacking embassies, schools and restaurants in retaliation for a film that mocks Islam. At least six protesters died in Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon and Sudan on Friday as local police battled to defend American missions from mobs of stone-throwers, and Washington deployed US Marines to protect its embassies in Libya and Yemen.
US ambassador Chris Stevens and the three other Americans died Tuesday when a mob torched the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Panetta argued it was too early to say what exactly happened in Benghazi and who was to blame for the attacks.
“It’s something that’s under assessment and under investigation, to determine just exactly what happened here,” he said.
But the defence secretary cautioned that even though the United States had dealt the al-Qaeda terror network a heavy blow in recent years, there were other extremists ready to pick up the torch.
“We always knew that we would have to continue to confront elements of extremism elsewhere as well,” he insisted.
“They’re going to resort to these kinds of tactics, because in many ways I think they have lost their voice in the Middle East,” Panetta added. — AFP