Syria war: new push against Assad being planned, reports suggest

Central to plan is drive to provide Syria's divided moderate, secular rebel groups with more support.
After months of battlefield stalemate in Syria, a flurry of reports from Washington, Jerusalem, Amman and the Gulf suggests a major new clandestine effort is under way to open up a "southern front" against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Central to the mooted plan is a renewed push to provide Syria's badly divided and often ineffectual moderate, secular rebel groups with additional funding, upgraded weapons and intelligence support.
What use they may make of such support, if indeed it fully materialises, remains to be seen.
The initiative, as reported in the region, is set against a backdrop of secret talks in the US last month between Susan Rice, Barack Obama's national security adviser, and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi interior minister in charge of covert action programmes in Syria.
***Read full article here***
*More information here