Panetta tells troops misconduct hurts morale, mission - CNN

Defense secretary speaks to deploying soldiersHe tells them misconduct threatens Afghan missionPast incidents include photos of troops posing with or urinating on corpses

(CNN) -- The enemy may be losing on the battlefield in Afghanistan, but he is trying to win the public relations war with the help of misconduct among a few U.S. military personnel, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told soldiers Friday.

Panetta, speaking at Fort Benning, Georgia, acknowledged the first anniversary of the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the accomplishments of troops serving across Afghanistan.

But he told members of the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division preparing for deployment that they must live up to high standards of personal conduct and integrity -- and avoid mistakes and scandal.

"I know that you are proud to wear the uniform of your country and that you strive to live up to the highest standards that we expect of you," Panetta said. "But the reality is we are fighting a different kind of war and living in a different kind of world than when I was a lieutenant here at Fort Benning. "

"These days, it takes only seconds -- seconds -- for a picture, a photo to suddenly become an international headline. And those headlines can impact the mission that we are engaged in," Panetta said. "It can put your fellow service members at risk. It can hurt morale. It can damage our standing in the world and they can cost lives."

A report issued this week by the Pentagon noted several "significant shocks" in Afghanistan from October to March, including the release of a video of U.S. Marines urinating on corpses, the inadvertent burning of religious materials by U.S. personnel and the alleged killing of 17 civilians by a lone U.S. soldier.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month condemned photos of U.S. soldiers posing with bodies of suspected insurgents.

Karzai, who described the images as "inhumane and provocative," said "the only way to put an end to such painful experiences" was to end the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan.

Panetta has condemned the photos, reportedly taken in 2010 and published by the Los Angeles Times, saying they depict behavior that "absolutely violates" U.S. regulations and values.

"I know that none of you deliberately acts to hurt your mission or to put your fellow soldiers at risk," Panetta told GIs on Friday. "You are the best, and that's why I am here today to tell you that ... I need your leadership, I need your courage, I need your strength to make sure that we always abide by the highest standards."

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Head of UN mission in Syria urges halt to violence - Fox News

BEIRUT –  The head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria on Sunday called on President Bashar Assad and the country's opposition to stop fighting and allow a tenuous cease-fire to take hold.

Maj. Gen. Robert Mood spoke after arriving in the Syrian capital, Damascus, to take charge of an advance team of 16 U.N. monitors trying to salvage an international peace plan to end the country's 13-month-old crisis.

Under the plan, a cease-fire is supposed to lead to talks between Assad and the opposition on a political solution to a conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people.

Mood told reporters that the 300 observers the U.N. has authorized for the mission "cannot solve all the problems" in Syria, asking for cooperation from forces loyal to Assad as well as rebels seeking to end his rule.

"We want to have combined efforts focusing on the welfare of the Syrian people," he said, "true cessation of violence in all its forms."

The cease-fire began unraveling almost as soon as it went into effect April 12. The regime has kept up its attacks on opposition strongholds, while rebel fighters have continued to ambush government security forces. Defying a major truce provision, the Syrian military has failed to withdraw tanks and soldiers from city streets.

Despite the violence, the truce still enjoys the support of the international community, largely because it views the plan as the last chance to prevent the country from falling into civil war — and because it does not want to intervene militarily.

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that while he is still hopeful, "unfortunately, I am also aware how much this plan is at risk."

"That's why it's especially important for this mission to expand quickly," Kellenberger told the Swiss newspaper Der Sonntag. He met with Syrian leaders earlier this month.

Most analysts say the plan has little chance of succeeding, though it could temporarily bring down the level of daily violence.

That has largely been the case in Homs, Syria's third largest city, which has emerged as the heart of the uprising. Regime forces pounded parts of Homs for months, leaving large swaths of the city in ruins, before two U.N. monitors moved into an upscale hotel there last week.

Since then, the level of violence has dropped, although gunbattles still frequently break out. "The shooting has not stopped in Homs," local activist Tarek Badrakhan said Sunday.

An amateur video posted online Saturday showed the observers walking through a heavily damaged neighborhood, where residents collected a body lying in the street and put it in the back of a pickup truck.

Mood, a Norwegian, was appointed head of the observer mission by U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon. One hundred monitors should be in the country by mid-May, said mission spokesman Neeraj Singh. It is unclear when or if the full contingent of 300 monitors will deploy to Syria.

Mood brings a wealth of Middle East experience to the job, including stints with U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon in 1989-1990 and as the head of a U.N. peacekeeping mission known as UNTSO from 2009 to 2011. That mission was the U.N's first-ever peacekeeping operation, starting after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war to monitor a cease-fire. It now watches cease-fires around the Middle East.

The Syrian state news agency said observers visited the embattled Homs neighborhood of Khaldiyeh on Sunday but provided no further information.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government snipers shot and killed two people in the neighborhood of Joret al-Shayah, which borders Khaldiyeh.

The group, which relies on a network of activists in Syria, also said one civilian was killed and four wounded in random gunfire by security forces in the village of al-Saliha in the central Hama province.

Ban has blamed the regime for widespread violations of the truce — prompting Syria to fire back that his comments were "outrageous" and accuse him of bias.

The spat has further stoked concerns among the Syrian opposition and its Western supporters that Assad is merely playing for time to avoid compliance with a plan that — if fully implemented — would likely sweep him out of office.

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Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria.

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