Danny Puff

Jim DeMint (Patrick Semansky/AP)

South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint will give up his Senate seat in early January to lead the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., the senator announced on Thursday.

DeMint, a well-known conservative who was re-elected to a second term in 2010, will replace Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner, who has led the organization for 35 years.

"I believe that I can do more good for the conservative movement outside of the Senate in leveraging the assets of the Heritage Foundation to communicate a more positive, optimistic message to the American people," DeMint told radio host Rush Limbaugh, echoing his statement released earlier Thursday morning.

From DeMint's statement:

I'm leaving the Senate now, but I'm not leaving the fight. I've decided to join The Heritage Foundation at a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas. No organization is better equipped to lead this fight and I believe my experience in public office as well as in the private sector as a business owner will help Heritage become even more effective in the years to come.

He added later in his statement: "My constituents know that being a Senator was never going to be my career."

Conservatives expressed bittersweet sentiments in reaction to the news.

From South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley:

Our state's loss is the Heritage Foundation's gain. I wish Jim and Heritage all the best in continuing our shared commitment to America's greatness. Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said in a statement, "It is disappointing to lose his strong voice in the Senate, but I look forward to his continued conservative leadership at the helm of The Heritage Foundation. The folks at Heritage are an indispensable ideas factory for conservatives in Congress. South Carolina's loss is the country's gain."

"Sen. DeMint has done more to advance the cause of freedom and liberty in Congress than anyone else since his election,"Club for Growth President Chris Chocola also said in a statement. "Sen. DeMint is a champion of economic freedom, a defender of free markets, and one of the strongest allies the Club for Growth has had in the United States Senate. We wish him nothing but the best in his new role at Heritage."

DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund was an influential force in the past two election cycles, often putting him directly at odds with his less-conservative incumbent colleagues.

When Limbaugh on Thursday noted that House Republican Speaker John Boehner would not find fault with DeMint's conservative voting record and "force him out of Congress," DeMint shot back, "It might work a little bit the other way."

DeMint conceded in his radio interview that "frustration" with Congress played into his decision, but said conservatives are as much to blame.

"The problem is not [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid. I think the problem is, as conservatives, we have not taken enough control of our message and our ideas and communicated them directly to the American people," DeMint told Limbaugh.

"I am also reassured that we have now stocked the Senate with some of the strongest conservatives in the country today, and that's a big change," he added. "So I'm leaving the Senate better than I found it, and I think I can do a lot to support these conservatives inside the Senate and the House working with the Heritage foundation."

DeMint cited a desire to advance the conservative cause Thursday as the reason for his resignation, but the former marketing research firm owner also stands to receive a very large pay increase as Heritage's new president.

The senator's current annual salary is$174,000; Feulner's salary is estimated to be over $1 million.

And DeMint's personal financial disclosure statements show he's nearly the least-affluent lawmaker in the U.S. Senateranked 98th out of 100 members by the Center for Responsive Politics for 2010 (the most recent year available)with an estimated net worth between $16,002 to $65,000.

Haley will be tasked with choosing a replacement senator to temporarily serve until a special election is held to choose a permanent successor.

Rep. Tim Scott's name was immediately circulated in the wake of the news as DeMint's preferred successor. Scott is a conservative, African-American popular with Tea Party activists.

"Looking forward, Governor Haley will now appoint a new Senator, and I know she will make the right choice both for South Carolina and the nation," Scott said in a statement Thursday.

"South Carolina has a deep bench of conservative leaders, and I know Gov. Haley will select a great replacement," DeMint publicly said of the succession process in his statement.

The special election is likely to attract candidates interested in running against Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is up for re-election in 2014 and has been the target of hard-line conservatives.

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DUBLIN (AP) The top U.S. and Russian diplomats will hold a surprise meeting Thursday with the United Nations' peace envoy for Syria, signaling fresh hopes of an international breakthrough to end the Arab country's 21-month civil war.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and mediator Lakhdar Brahimi will gather in Dublin on the sidelines of a human rights conference, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. She provided few details about the unscheduled get-together.

Ahead of the three-way meeting, Clinton and Lavrov met separately Thursday for about 25 minutes. They agreed to hear Brahimi out on a path forward, a senior U.S. official said. The two also discussed issues ranging from Egypt to North Korea, as well as new congressional action aimed at Russian officials accused of complicity in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The former Cold War foes have fought bitterly over how to address Syria's conflict, with Washington harshly criticizing Moscow of shielding its Arab ally. The Russians respond by accusing the U.S. of meddling by demanding the downfall of President Bashar Assad's regime and ultimately seeking an armed intervention such as the one last year against the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

But the gathering of the three key international figures suggests possible compromise in the offing. At the least, it confirms what officials describe as an easing of some of the acrimony that has raged between Moscow and Washington over the future of an ethnically diverse nation whose stability is seen as critical given its geographic position in between powder kegs Iraq, Lebanon and Israel.

The threat of Syria's government using some of its vast stockpiles of chemical weapons is also adding urgency to diplomatic efforts. Western governments have cited the rising danger of such a scenario this week, and officials say Russia, too, shares great concern on this point.

On Thursday, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad accused the United States and Europe of using the issue of chemical weapons to justify a future military intervention against Syria. He warned that any such intervention would be "catastrophic."

In Ireland's capital, one idea that Brahimi could seek to resuscitate with U.S. and Russian support would be the political agreement strategy both countries agreed on in Geneva in June.

That plan demanded several steps by the Assad regime to de-escalate tensions and end the violence that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011. It would then have required Syria's opposition and the regime to put forward candidates for a transitional government, with each side having the right to veto nominees proposed by the other.

If employed, the strategy would surely mean the end of more than four decades of an Assad family member at Syria's helm. The opposition has demanded Assad's departure and has rejected any talk of him staying in power. Yet it also would grant regime representatives the opportunity to block Sunni extremists and others in the opposition that they reject.

The transition plan never got off the ground this summer, partly because no pressure was applied to see it succeed by a deeply divided international community. Brahimi's predecessor, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who drafted the plan, then resigned his post in frustration.

The United States blamed the collapse on Russia for vetoing a third resolution at the U.N. Security Council that would have applied world sanctions against Assad's government for failing to live by the deal's provisions.

Russia insisted that the Americans unfairly sought Assad's departure as a precondition and worried about opening the door to military action, even as Washington offered to include language in any U.N. resolution that would have expressly forbade outside armed intervention.

Should a plan similar to that one be proposed, the Obama administration is likely to insist anew that it be internationally enforceable a step Moscow may still be reluctant to commit to.

In any case, the U.S. insists the tide of the war is turning definitively against Assad.

On Wednesday, the administration said several countries in the Middle East and elsewhere have informally offered to grant asylum to Assad and his family if they leave Syria.

The comments came a day after the United States and its 27 NATO allies agreed to send Patriot missiles to Turkey's southern border with Syria. The deployment, expected within weeks, is meant solely as a defensive measure against the cross-border mortar rounds from Syria that have killed five Turks, but still bring the alliance to the brink of involvement in the civil war.

The United States is also preparing to designate Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian rebel group with alleged ties to al-Qaida, as a foreign terrorist organization in a step aimed at blunting the influence of extremists within the Syrian opposition, officials said Wednesday.

Word of the move came as the State Department announced Clinton will travel to the Mideast and North Africa next week for high-level meetings on the situation in Syria and broader counter-terrorism issues. She is likely then to recognize Syria's newly formed opposition coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, according to officials.

The political endorsement is designed to help unite the country against Assad and spur greater nonlethal and humanitarian assistance from the United States to the rebels.

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Afghan policemen stand guard at the site of a suicide attack that wounded Afghanistan's Intelligence Chief Asadullah

Afghan President Hamid Karzai blamed the U.S. and NATO forces on Thursday for some of the violence in his war-torn country and bluntly criticized allied tactics, declaring that terrorists won't be beaten "by attacking Afghan villages and Afghan homes."

Speaking in an exclusive interview with NBC News, Karzai also said he had written a letter to President Barack Obama warning that Afghans will not permit American and NATO troops to stay past 2014 unless the U.S. turns over hundreds of detainees held at Bagram Air Base and a nearby facility.

"I have written to President Obama that the Afghan people will not allow its government to enter into a security agreement while the United States continues to violate Afghan sovereignty," he said. "Part of the insecurity is coming to us from the structures that NATO and America created in Afghanistan."

NATO-led forces are currently scheduled to withdraw by the end of 2014, but the Obama Administration has entered into negotiations with the government in Kabul on a security pact that would allow some as-yet undisclosed number of troops to remain beyond that point. Their mission would be to train Afghan security forces and carry out counter-terrorism missions. White House press secretary Jay Carney recently said that Obama has not yet settled on the size of that residual force. The spokesman also suggested that no troops might remain.

White House officials did not immediately return requests for comment.Obama made the American withdrawal from Iraq and planned withdrawal from Afghanistan key planks of his reelection platform. But the pull-out from Iraq came about in part because of the collapse of negotiations over maintaining an American presence there. The Iraqi government refused to give U.S. forces immunity from prosecutiona deal-breaker for Washington. Karzai's comments raise the specter of another possible deal-breaker.

Karzai has regularly denounced NATO night raids and strikes that have killed civilians in Afghanistan. But he also aims to secure billions of dollars in long-term aid for his country's military and economy. (At a farewell press conference with then-President George W. Bush in December 2008, Karzai said: "Afghanistan will not allow the international community leave it before we are fully on our feet, before we are strong enough to defend our country, before we are powerful enough to have a good economy, and before we have taken from President Bush and the next administration billions and billions of more dollarsno way that [we] can let you go.")

More than 3,000 American and allied military personnel have been killed in the decade-long conflict launched to catch or kill Osama bin Laden, who Navy SEALS shot dead in a dramatic May 2011 raid inside Pakistan.

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Accused movie theater shooter James Holmes had "a brief romantic relationship" with a graduate student at the University of Colorado, according to one of thousands of emails released to ABC News today.

The revelation came from an email written by an employee of the university, Larry Hunter, to a colleague late in the morning after Holmes is alleged to have killed 12 and wounded 58 at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises."

Hunter wrote to his colleague, "Yeah, he was a grad student here, and, it turns out, had a brief romantic relationship with one of the grad students in my program last fall. She, fortunately, it turns out is in India right now. She knows, and is pretty freaked out."

The rampage is considered the most extensive mass shooting in U.S. history.

PHOTOS: Colorado 'Dark Knight Rises' Theater Shooting

Another email nearly two weeks after the shooting seemed to show growing concern from at least one student about the way the university was responding.

On Aug. 2, 2012, upon learning that Holmes' psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, had gone to a university threat assessment team about Holmes before the theater massacre, one University of Colorado student wrote an angry letter to the CU communications department. In it, she said, "This is a major failure of the system. You need to address this issue with the students. We deserve to know what's going on here."

The same day, two professors in the University of Colorado's oncology department exchanged emails about a story that noted Holmes had been referred to the threat assessment team.

Said professor Gail Eckhardt to colleague Well Messersmith, "It's really getting messy and heads are going to roll over this -- so tragic."

In July, ABC News and other news organizations filed a series of public records requests with the University of Colorado asking to see the chain of emails by or between key university officials in the days and weeks following the attack.

Soon after that request, a gag order was issued preventing the release of documents such as the one described above.

ABC News also requested to inspect any emails Holmes may have sent to professors or others related to non-personal items such as federally funded research for the university.

Last month, a judge released CU from its gag order.

Today, the university made nearly 3,800 emails public, including approximately 2,300 redacted emails from university employees and an additional 1,500 from two university email accounts belonging to Holmes, himself.

CU also withheld nearly 1,000 emails from university officials and nearly 1,200 emails from Holmes, telling ABC News, "There are additional e-mails not subject to disclosure because they are student records."

ABC News is in the process of sifting through the trove of emails released today. You can check back ABCNews.com for updates.

If you have information or a tip you would like to share about the Holmes case, you can email mark.p.greenblatt@abc.com.

Also Read

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will produce one of its existing lines of Mac computers in the United States next year.

Cook made the comments in part of an interview taped for NBC's "Rock Center," but aired Thursday morning on "Today" and posted on the network's website.

In a separate interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, he said that the company will spend $100 million in 2013 to move production of the line to the U.S. from China.

"This doesn't mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we'll be working with people and we'll be investing our money," Cook told Bloomberg.

A call to Apple Inc. for comment before business hours Thursday was not immediately returned.

Like most consumer electronics companies, Apple lets contract manufacturers assemble its products overseas. However, the assembly accounts for little of the cost of making a PC or smartphone. Most of the cost lies in buying chips, and many of those are made in the U.S., Cook noted in his interview with NBC.

The company and its manufacturing partner Foxconn Technology Group have faced significant criticism this year over working conditions at the Chinese facilities where Apple products are assembled, prompting Foxconn to raise salaries.

Cook didn't say which line of computers would be produced in the U.S. or where in the country they would be made. But he told Bloomberg that the production would include more than just final assembly.

Regardless, the U.S. manufacturing line is expected to represent just a tiny piece of Apple overall production, with sales of iPhones and iPads now dwarfing those of its computers.

Cook said in his interview with NBC that companies like Apple chose to produce their products in places like China, not because of the lower costs associated with it, but because the manufacturing skills required just aren't present in the U.S. anymore.

He added that the consumer electronics world has never really had a big production presence in the U.S. As a result, it's really more about starting production in the U.S. than bringing it back.

The news comes a day after Apple posted its worst stock drop in four years, erasing $35 million in market capitalization. Apple shares fell $18.57, or 3.4 percent, to $529.95 in Thursday's premarket session.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama takes his "fiscal-cliff" campaign to the home of a family in Northern Virginia on Thursday to illustrate the impact of letting taxes go up on the middle class, as signs emerge that Republicans are contemplating a change in strategy in their battle with Democrats over deficit reduction.

With about three weeks remaining before steep tax hikes and budget cuts that comprise the so-called fiscal cliff are set to begin, the White House said Obama would visit the home of a family that responded to a presidential Twitter request for real-life stories about the burden of a tax increase on the middle class.

Northern Virginia is a suburban expanse across the Potomac River from the U.S. capital that includes some of the wealthiest counties in the United States as well as populous middle-class developments that have grown up over the past quarter century. Due to its proximity to the White House, the president often uses it as a setting for public relations efforts.

"A member of this family shared her story about how paying $2,200 more in taxes next year would impact them if Congress doesn't act," said a White House statement, which added that over 100,000 people responded to the Twitter request.

Obama and Democrats in Congress want the tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year to be extended for taxpayers with income below $250,000 a year, but not for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

In exchange, the president has said he is willing to consider significant spending cuts that include unspecified changes to "entitlement" programs such as Medicare, the government health insurance plan for seniors.

Republicans are holding out for an extension of all the tax cuts, but have become increasingly divided over the past two weeks about whether they can prevail in the face of Obama's firm stance and Republican control of only the House of Representatives but not the U.S. Senate.

On Wednesday night, Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee hinted on PBS' "Newshour" program that a change of strategy might be in the works.

"I think that there's a lot of thinking about the best way to actually cause the president to actually come forth with a real plan" for deficit reduction that might break the deadlock, he said, adding that "it just isn't" happening now.

"There's movement in a lot of directions," he said. "And so I do think Republicans are looking" at "what is the best way to get us in a place where we actually have the leverage."

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

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The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to wade into gay marriage cases Friday. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

On Friday morning, the Supreme Court will announce whether it will hear two major cases that could have a sweeping impact on the definition of marriage in the United States and on same-sex couples' right to wed.

Ten cases dealing with gay marriage are pending before the court, but legal experts pinpoint two of them as the most likely for the court to consider.

The Defense of Marriage Act

The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, recently has been struck down by two federal appeals courts, which means the Supreme Court is all but obligated to take at least one of the cases to settle the dispute between Congress and the courts. The case thought most likely to be picked up by the justices is Windsor v. United States, which challenges DOMA, a law passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex married couples, even those in states that allow gay marriage.

The suit was brought by Edith Windsor, a resident of New York who paid $363,000 in estate taxes after her wife died because the federal government did not recognize their marriage. New York is one of nine states (and the District of Columbia) where gay marriage is legal, so Windsor argues that the federal government is discriminating against her by not recognizing her state-sanctioned marriage.

Doug NeJaime, an associate professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said that equal protection under the law, which is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, is the key issue at stake in this case. Windsor argues that by singling out same-sex marriages and treating them differently from other marriages, the federal government is in violation of their rights. Since marriage has traditionally been regulated by the state, Windsor's lawyers say the federal government has no business interfering with New York's definition of marriage.

Windsor's attorneys are not arguing, however, that marriage is a fundamental right that all Americans are entitled to, no matter their sexual orientation. And few experts expect the Supreme Court to make such a sweeping decision.

If the justices do strike down DOMA, the decision will broadly affect gay couples who marry in states that recognize same-sex nuptials. Most importantly, they would begin to qualify for the same federal marriage benefits other couples receive, including tax breaks and Social Security survivor benefits. And according to advocates, the decision would send an even larger message -- that all marriages are equal under the law.

As with other recent major cases, Justice Anthony Kennedy appears to be the swing vote. For DOMA to be overturned, Kennedy would have to join the court's four liberal justices to form a majority.

Kennedy has a libertarian streak that makes his votes unpredictable, as well as a legal record in favor of gay rights. In 2003, Kennedy wrote the Court's opinion inLawrence v Texas, a landmark decision that said the government cannot outlaw sodomy since it's an intrusion into the private lives of gay people. Kennedy also cast the deciding vote striking down a Colorado law that would have prevented local governments from passing laws specifically protecting gay and lesbian civil rights.

Because of Kennedy's history on the issue, many legal experts think there's a good chance the court will strike down DOMA if it takes the case.

"I think that Justice Kennedy knows that he has the choice: Does he want to write the nextPlessy v. Ferguson or does he want to write the nextBrown v. Education," said Erwin Chemerinsky, founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, and a proponent of gay rights. The landmark Brown civil rights case overturned Plessy, which had endorsed "separate but equal" segregation in public schools.

"There's no doubt where the world is going on this issue," Chemerinsky said of same-sex marriage.

But John Eastman, chairman of the anti-gay marriage National Organization for Marriage and a law professor at Chapman University,said it's still unclear how Kennedy will decide, despite his landmark opinion in Lawrence. "There's a pretty big difference between criminalizing conduct and redefining marriage," Chapman said, referring to the anti-sodomy laws Kennedy struck down. "He could draw the line there."

Proposition 8

Court watchers think the Supreme Court also will take up Proposition 8, California's gay marriage ban. Voters passed Prop. 8 in 2008 months after the state's high court had legalized same sex unions and thousands of gay Californians had already tied the knot. Two federal courts have struck down Prop. 8 as discriminatory, leaving the Supreme Court to render a final judgment.

The lower courts' decisions made an overt appeal to Justice Kennedy by repeatedly citing his decision in the Colorado gay rights case. The lower court judges argued that by revoking marriage rights after they had already been granted, same-sex couples had been illegally singled out for discrimination.

If the Supreme Court agrees with that interpretation and decides to let the lower courts' rulings remain in place, gay couples in California--the nation's most populous state --would be able to get married legally within the month. But the decision would only apply to California. If the court does take up the case, the justices will decide by June whether to strike down or uphold the state's gay marriage ban.

The Prop. 8 case differs from the DOMA case in one key respect: In Prop. 8, the pro-gay marriage side is arguing that marriage is a fundamental right that should not be denied to people based on their sexual orientation. That means the Supreme Court, in theory, could issue a sweeping decision on Prop. 8 that legalizes gay marriage throughout the country and invalidates state gay marriage bans.

Geoffrey Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, thinks that's unlikely. He says the justices will most likely wait for public opinion--which has just recently begun to swing in support of gay marriage--and state laws to coalesce around the issue before issuing a broad decision.

"The more this percolates, the easier it is to address this in the future," Stone said.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Western powers are whipping up fears of a fateful move to the use of chemical weapons in Syria's civil war as a "pretext for intervention", President Bashar al-Assad's deputy foreign minister said on Thursday.

He spoke as Germany's cabinet approved stationing Patriot anti-missile batteries on Turkey's border with Syria, a step requiring deployment of NATO troops that Syria fears could permit imposition of a no-fly zone over its territory.

"Syria stresses again, for the tenth, the hundredth time, that if we had such weapons, they would not be used against its people. We would not commit suicide," Faisal Maqdad said.

U.S. President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders have warned that using chemical weapons would cross a red line and "there would be consequences". Assad would probably lose vital diplomatic support from Russia and China that has blocked military intervention in the 20-month-old uprising that has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

Maqdad said Western reports that the Syrian military was preparing chemical weapons for use against rebel forces trying to close in on the capital Damascus were simply "theatre".

"In fact, we fear a conspiracy ... by the United States and some European states, which might have supplied such weapons to terrorist organizations in Syria, in order to claim later that Syria is the one that used these weapons," he said on Lebanon's Al Manar television, the voice of Hezbollah.

"We fear there is a conspiracy to provide a pretext for any subsequent interventions in Syria by these countries that are increasing pressure on Syria."

UNCONTROLLABLE

Exactly what Syria's army has done with suspected chemical weapons to prompt a surge of Western warnings is not clear. Reports citing Western intelligence and defense sources are vague and inconsistent.

The perceived threat may be discussed in Dublin on Thursday when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meet international Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi to try to put a U.N. peace process for Syria back on track.

The talks come ahead of a meeting of the Western-backed "Friends of Syria" group in Marrakech next week which is expected to boost support for rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Brahimi wants world powers to issue a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a transitional administration.

In addition to the possible use of chemical bombs by "an increasingly desperate" Assad, Clinton said Washington was concerned about the government losing control of such weapons to extreme Islamist armed groups among the rebel forces.

The United States is considering blacklisting one group suspected of ties to al Qaeda. U.S. officials confirmed that Jabhat al-Nusra, an influential rebel group accused of indiscriminate tactics that has advocated an Islamic state in Syria, was under review for blacklisting.

An explosion in front of the Damascus headquarters of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent killed at least one person on Thursday, Syrian state television said.

It blamed "terrorists from al Qaeda" -- a term often employed to refer to rebel forces.

Meanwhile, activists said the army pummeled several eastern suburbs of Damascus, where the rebels are dominant, with artillery and mortar fire. The suburbs have also been cut off from the city's water and electricity for weeks, rebels say, accusing the government of collective punishment.

COLLAPSE

Assad responded to past warnings about chemical weapons by taking steps to secure them, according to Israel's vice prime minister Moshe Yaalon.

"There is speculation that the chemical arsenal will fall into the hostile and irresponsible hands of the likes of al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. In the past, clear messages were relayed to Assad on a number of occasions, and in response Assad in fact gathered up the weaponry and separated the materials," Yaalon said on Wednesday.

Rebels say they have surrounded an air base 4 km (2-1/2 mikes) from the center of Damascus, a fresh sign the battle is closing in on the Syrian capital.

Maqdad, in his interview on Thursday, argued that reports of such advances were untrue: "What is sad is that foreign countries believe these repeated rumors."

But residents inside the capital say that the sound of shelling on the outskirts has become a constant backdrop and many fear the fight will soon come to Damascus.

The Western military alliance's decision to send U.S., German and Dutch Patriot missile batteries to help defend the Turkish border would bring European and U.S. troops to Syria's frontier for the first time in the 20-month-old civil war.

The actual deployment could take several weeks.

"Some countries now are now supplying Turkey with missiles for which there is no excuse. Syria is not going to attack the Turkish people," Maqdad said.

But a veteran Turkish commentator, Cengiz Candar of the Radikal newspaper, said Ankara fears Syria's 500 short-range ballistic missiles could fall into the wrong hands.

The government is "of the view that Syria was not expected to use them against Turkey, but that there was a risk of these weapons falling into the hands of 'uncontrolled forces' when the regime collapses", he wrote.

(Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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WASHINGTON (AP) The dealmakers who warn that a year-end plunge off the "fiscal cliff" would be disastrous don't seem to be rushing to stop it. Why aren't they panicking?

For one thing, the Dec. 31 deadline is more flexible than it sounds. Like all skilled procrastinators, from kids putting off homework to taxpayers who file late, Washington negotiators know they can finagle more time if they need it.

That doesn't mean delay would be cost-free. Stock markets might tank if 2013 dawns without a deal. But Americans could be temporarily spared many of the other ill effects if Congress and President Barack Obama blow past their deadline.

The Obama administration would have power to delay some of the tax increases and spending cuts that would officially take effect as January begins. Then, if an agreement is reached early in the year, it could be applied retroactively to wipe them out.

Some lawmakers even argue that briefly going over the cliff is the best way to force a compromise. The Obama administration on Wednesday indicated it would take the plunge if necessary to ensure that the wealthy end up paying higher tax rates.

Pushing the deadline too far is a risky strategy, however. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the fiscal cliff policies, if left unchecked, would spark a recession later in 2013 and send the unemployment rate above 9 percent by fall.

How long could negotiators balk and bicker before putting the U.S. economy in jeopardy? The calendar becomes less and less forgiving as the weeks pass.

A procrastinator's guide to pushing the deadline:

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DECEMBER

Democrats led by Obama and Republicans led by House Speaker John Boehner say it's critical to reach a deal this month. Yet both sides appear dug in over taxes. And their two plans are far apart on how much to cut spending while the economy is still recovering from the last recession.

So far, Boehner said, "we're nowhere."

If compromise were easy for this bunch, they wouldn't be in this jam. A good chunk of the fiscal cliff the automatic spending cuts known as the "sequester" is an artificial deadline created by Congress in hopes of forcing itself to come up with a deficit-cutting plan. It arrives at the same time as the expiration of the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts and other temporary tax breaks scheduled to end unless Congress extends them. Together the taxes and cuts would equal close to $700 billion in deficit reduction over 2013.

Congress could vote to override all this and essentially freeze taxes and spending where they are now while the economy heals. But Obama and lawmakers, especially Republicans bent on budget-cutting, see the fiscal cliff as the critical moment to overcome inertia on the nation's long-term debt crisis.

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JANUARY

If there's no deal in December, the economy won't fall off a cliff on New Year's Day. But it probably will begin a bumpy downhill ride.

The new Congress that convenes Jan. 3 won't look much different from the one that's deadlocked now, divided between a Republican-controlled House and a Democratic-dominated Senate. The lawmakers would feel more heat, however.

Higher taxes for nearly everyone and across-the-board spending cuts would already be law.

"People will get more nervous day by day," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. Still, he thinks the economy could weather a few more weeks of uncertainty as long as negotiators appeared to be working toward an agreement.

If the Bush-era tax cuts expired, that would raise income taxes for the average middle-class family by $2,200 over the course of 2013, the White House says. That's about $42 per week, probably not enough to curtail spending right away and deal an immediate blow to the economy, economists say.

Plus, taxpayers might never have to ante up. The Treasury Department sets withholding tables that determine how much tax comes out of Americans' paychecks. It could hold off raising the withholding if a deal seems to be in the works, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow of the private Tax Policy Center.

Both Republicans and Democrats say they don't want middle-class taxpayers to pay higher tax rates. They disagree over whether to let tax rates rise on individual income above $200,000, as Obama wants.

Other far-reaching tax changes are more likely to go ahead in January. For example, although Obama proposes extending the temporary Social Security payroll tax reduction, support for that has been weak. So more money might start coming out of workers' pay, whether or not a fiscal cliff deal is reached. That's another $1,000 over the year, or a little more than $19 per week, from a worker making $50,000.

As for the sequester, the White House can direct the Pentagon and federal agencies to husband their resources for a while and hold off on some spending cuts while negotiations continue.

"The more there's an anticipation that there's actually an agreement in the works, the less of an impact any of this should have," said Chad Stone, chief economist for the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He argues that it's OK to miss the fiscal cliff deadline if necessary to achieve a well-designed agreement.

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FEBRUARY

What might finally get procrastinators moving if nothing else has? Fear of the United States defaulting on its debts for the first time ever.

Unless Congress acts, the government is expected to hit its legal borrowing limit of $16.39 trillion by the end of December. Treasury Department maneuvers should hold off a default for a couple more months, until late February or early March, private economists say.

Congress could raise the debt limit anytime now, if lawmakers agreed, before resolving the fiscal cliff. But it's being discussed as part of the bigger tax-and-spending package. The White House says raising the debt limit must be included in the deal; Boehner says the Republicans want any increase in the government's borrowing to be matched by spending cuts.

Remember the last debt limit showdown? The government came within a whisker of default in August 2011 before a compromise was reached. The financial markets reeled. Standard & Poor's downgraded the nation's credit rating.

Again coming to the edge of default an economic crisis that scares investors more than the fiscal cliff would probably send markets plummeting and finally shake up lawmakers, too.

"That's a pretty scary thing to watch," Zandi said. "For a policymaker that's real motivation."

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BERLIN (AP) Israel's prime minister is brushing off international criticism over a planned new settlement project near Jerusalem, saying Israel will keep the area under any future peace deal in any case.

Israel's plans to build 3,000 new settler homes in the corridor near Jerusalem triggered sharp criticism in Europe.

After meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "most governments who have looked at these proposals over the years including the Palestinians themselves ... understand that these blocs ... are going to be part of Israel in a final political settlement of peace."

Palestinians say that would make it impossible for them to establish a viable state in the West Bank.

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