France says it is ready to give weapons to Syria rebels

9/19/2013

PARIS - French President Francois Hollande suggested for the first time today that Paris could arm Syrian rebels in a “controlled framework” given that they were now caught between the Syrian government on one side and radical Islamists on the other.

“I assess that the Russians regularly send them (weapons), but we will do it in a broader context with a number of countries and in a framework that can be controlled because we cannot accept that weapons could fall into the hands of jihadists that we have fought against here (in Mali),” Hollande told a news conference in Bamako, where he was attending a ceremony to mark the swearing-in of Mali's new president.