Iran, Syria among topics as world leaders gather in US

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama is using weekend gatherings of world leaders — dominated by discussion of European economic woes and Afghanistan — to solidify world resolve against development of an Iranian nuclear bomb and to encourage a more-forceful response to worsening violence in Syria.

Obama will have the ear of key players on both issues during back-to-back G-8 and NATO summits. Discussion will be aimed directly and indirectly at Russia, a sometime protector of both Iran and Syria and the chief blockade to such U.S. goals as an arms embargo on Syria.

The gatherings come in the shadow of the eurozone debt crisis and plummeting public support for the war in Afghanistan. Political and economic chaos in Greece and Spain underscored just how fragile Europe’s economy remains after an eviscerating austerity regime. Germany’s finance minister predicted Friday that the crisis could last up to an additional two years.

Most of the leaders are part of overlapping international coalitions formed to address the Iranian nuclear problem and the newer crisis in Syria, where an estimated 9,000 people have died in more than a year of violence that arose from the pro-democracy Arab uprisings.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was part of a discussion focused on Syria and Iran on Friday evening among the G-8 industrial nations. Faced with implacable Russian opposition to significant new United Nations punishments on the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials are trying to get consensus among other allies about ways to promote Assad’s ouster.