White House steps up pressure on Congress to arm Syria rebels

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President Obama is making calls to lawmakers on Capitol Hill urging them to support giving him authority to arm and train Syrian rebels in a vote later this week. The White House is “gratified” by early signs of support for the president’s request, it said, but Obama will to continue to call lawmakers in the coming days. “We’ve seen public statements from Democrats and Republicans in senior positions both in the House and the Senate indicate that they support giving the administration the necessary authority to ramp up our assistance to the Syrian opposition by training and equipping them,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. “So we’re gratified by that show of bipartisan public support for this urgent priority.” The White House is seeking explicit authority to establish a center to train and equip members of the Syrian opposition, who are battling both the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The facility, likely to be hosted in Saudi Arabia, is a key component of the president's strategy to combat the terror network, with the administration saying it needs a competent rebel fighting force to prevent ISIS from achieving a safe haven in Syria — or the Assad regime from benefiting from airstrikes against the terror group.

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