Mitt Romney wants Syrian rebels armed

Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney on Monday attacked US President Barack Obama for his "failed" Middle East policy and said as president, he would see that Syrian rebels receive weapons, DPA reported.

In his first major foreign policy speech, Romney outlined a robust internationalist role for the United States and called for it to take a more active role in shaping developments in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Speaking from the country's oldest military academy, the Virginia Military Institute, in Lexington, Virginia, Romney hailed the work of a VMI graduate - George Marshall - in shoring up a free Europe after World War II, and indicated the US should be playing the same role in the Middle East.

Romney charged that Obama had "failed to offer the tangible support that our partners want and need" as the Arab Spring unfolded since early 2011.

Citing the rising tide of anti-American attacks across the Muslim world, such as that on the US consulate in Libya, which claimed the lives of four American diplomats, Romney said Obama's policies had failed to head off such anger.

"With Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, with the conflict in Syria threatening to destabilize the region, and with violent extremists on the march, and with an American ambassador and three others dead likely at the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates - it is clear that the risk of conflict in the region is higher now than when the president took office," Romney said.

Romney said that if elected, he would bolster the US military presence in the Gulf and Mediterranean region, build 15 Navy ships a year, including three submarines, and expand missile defences.

"In Syria, I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and then ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad's tanks, helicopters and fighter jets," Romney said.

He said that Washington should be working "no less vigorously" than Iran, which is "sending arms" to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to support the opposition rebels.

The administration of Obama, whom Romney is trying to unseat on November 6, has held steadfast to supplying only humanitarian and communications aid to the rebels.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that others in the region are supplying military aid, but the US needed to more carefully identify rebels who are not affiliated with an escalating presence of al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria.

In order to hinder Iran from developing a nuclear weapons, Romney would impose a new round of sanctions, he said. He would also restore "the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf ... and work with Israel to increase our military assistance and coordination."

The rial has reportedly lost between 75 and 80 per cent of its value in the past year, as US-led international sanctions, which include a ban on purchasing Iranian oil, hit the economy.

Iran has seen protests over the falling value of its currency in recent weeks, and has cracked down on what it says are currency speculators.

Romney vowed to hold NATO members to their obligation to "keep the greatest military alliance in history strong" by actually paying their commitment of 2 per cent of gross domestic product to security spending. Currently, he noted, only three NATO nations do so.

Romney has made several major foreign policy blunders during his campaign, including on a trip to Europe and Israel in the summer. In London, he provoked the government of David Cameron with the suggestion that Britain was not adequately prepared for the Olympics.

In Israel, he implied that the Palestinians were culturally inferior to the Israelis because of their poverty, without mentioning the decades-long economic blockade that has crippled the Palestinian territories.