In a diplomatic shift, President Obama said today his administration now formally recognizes the newly-formed, leading coalition of Syrian rebels who are fighting to topple Syria's embattled President Bashar Assad. 
 
 "We've made a decision that the Syrian Opposition Coalition is now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime," Obama said. 
 
 The announcement, made during an exclusive interview with ABC News' Barbara Walters, grants new legitimacy to the rebel group and marks a new phase in U.S. efforts to isolate the Assad regime. 
 
 "It's a big step," Obama said of the decision. The United States follows Britain and the European Union, both of which last month recognized the Syrian opposition group. 
 
 The diplomatic designation will allow the United States to more closely support rebel efforts, including the organization of a future post-Assad government, administration officials said. 
 
 "Obviously, with that recognition comes responsibilities," Obama said of the young coalition. "To make sure that they organize themselves effectively, that they are representative of all the parties, [and] that they commit themselves to a political transition that respects women's rights and minority rights." 
 
 The move does not include the provision of weapons, but it opens the door for that possibility in the future. 
 
 "Providing arms has to be done in a way that helps promote a political solution," one senior Obama administration official said today. "And until we understand how these arms promote a political solution, we do not see how provision of arms is a good idea." 
 
 But the official added, "the president has never ruled out in the future providing arms." 
 
 Obama expressed caution today about some Syrian factions involved with the coalition, warning that the United States will not support extremist elements. 
 
 "Not everybody who's participating on the ground in fighting Assad are people who we are comfortable with," Obama told Walters. "There are some who, I think, have adopted an extremist agenda, an anti-U.S. agenda, and we are going to make clear to distinguish between those elements." 
 
 The president specifically singled out the group Jabhat al-Nusrah for its alleged affiliation with Al Qaeda in Iraq. The State Department says the jihadist group is responsible for nearly 600 violent attacks in major Syrian cities in the past year. 
 
 "Through these attacks, al-Nusrah has sought to portray itself as part of the legitimate Syrian opposition while it is, in fact, an attempt by [Al Qaeda in Iraq] to hijack the struggles of the Syrian people for its own malign purposes," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. 
 
 The Obama administration blacklisted al-Nusrah earlier this week, imposing economic sanctions and branding it a terrorist organization. 
 
 Recognition of the Syrian rebel group has been expected. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to formally announce the new relations with the United States during a meeting of international allies supporting Syria's rebels in Marrakech, Morocco, on Wednesday. 
 
 She has since cancelled her trip because of an illness. Her deputy, Bill Burns, will attend in her place. 
 
 President Obama also discussed the looming "fiscal cliff" and suggested a new flexibility on cuts to entitlement spending. Read that report here. 
 
 ABC News' Martha Raddatz contributed to this report. ||||| “Not everybody who is participating on the ground in fighting Assad are people that we are comfortable with,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on the ABC program “20/20.” “There are some who I think have adopted an extremist agenda, an anti-U.S. agenda.” 
 
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 But Mr. Obama praised the opposition, known formally as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, for what he said was its inclusiveness, its openness to various ethnic and religious groups, and its ties to local councils involved in the fighting against Mr. Assad’s security forces. 
 
 “At this point we have a well-organized-enough coalition — opposition coalition that is representative — that we can recognize them as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people,” he said. 
 
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 For some experts on Syria, however, the question was whether Mr. Obama’s move was too little, too late. Britain, France, Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council have previously recognized the Syrian opposition. And the move does nothing to change the military equation inside Syria, where Mr. Assad has clung to power despite gains by rebel fighters. 
 
 Mr. Obama notably did not commit himself to providing arms to the rebels he is recognizing or to supporting them militarily with airstrikes or the establishment of a no-fly zone, a stance that has led to a rise of anti-American sentiment among many of the rebels. 
 
 The United States has played an active role behind the scenes in shaping the opposition, insisting that it be broadened and made more inclusive. But until Mr. Obama's announcement on Tuesday, the United States had held off on formally recognizing the opposition coalition, asserting that it wanted to use the lure of recognition to encourage the rebel leaders to flesh out their political structure and fill important posts. 
 
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 In recent weeks, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces has been in the process of developing a series of committees on humanitarian assistance, education, health, judicial matters and security issues. 
 
 Mr. Obama’s statement was an acknowledgment that the opposition had made sufficient progress to merit recognition. The American hope is that the opposition, in conjunction with local councils that are being formed in Syria, could help govern areas that have been wrested from Mr. Assad's control, provide public services like law enforcement and utilities, and perhaps even channel humanitarian assistance. Alluding to this role, Mr. Obama said that the opposition would “have some responsibilities to carry out.” 
 
 But Mr. Obama's move does not go so far as to confer on the opposition the legal authority of a state. It does not, for example, recognize the opposition's right to gain access to Syrian government money, take over the Syrian Embassy in Washington or enter into binding diplomatic commitments. 
 
 It is also unclear to what extent the move might influence the situation inside Syria, where the pace of the fighting appears to have intensified. A senior American official who is attending the meeting in Morocco said on Tuesday that none of the rebel military commanders from the Free Syrian Army would be attending the meeting on Wednesday. 
 
 “There are people here who definitely coordinate with armed groups, with the Free Syrian Army,” he said. “That is not to say they are giving instructions to it; they do not. It is not to say that they are telling it what to do or what to say in the international field; they are not. In a sense, the Free Syrian Army is a separate organization.” 
 
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 Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow and a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: “The recognition is designed as a political shot in the arm for the opposition. But it’s happening in the context of resentment among the Syrian opposition, especially armed elements, of the White House’s lack of assistance during the Syrian people’s hour of need. This is especially true among armed groups.” ||||| Mr. Assad’s decision to fire Scuds — not known for their precision — inside his own country appears directly related to the rebel ability to take command of military bases and seize antiaircraft weapons. The Scuds have been fired since Monday from the An Nasiriyah Air Base, north of Damascus, according to American officials familiar with the classified intelligence reports about the attacks. The target was the Sheikh Suleiman base north of Aleppo, which rebel forces had occupied. 
 
 The development may also represent a calculation by the Syrian leadership that it can resort to such lethal weapons without the fear of international intervention, partly because Washington had set its tolerance threshold at the use of chemical weapons. Mr. Obama has never suggested that the United States would take action to stop attacks against Syrian rebels and civilians with conventional weapons, no matter how severe. 
 
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 “This may be another example of the unintended consequence of the red line the administration has drawn with regard to chemical weapons,” said Joseph Holliday, a former Army intelligence officer and a senior analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a nongovernmental research group. “Assad views every weapon short of chemicals as fair game.” 
 
 The disclosure about the Scuds came as representatives of more than 100 nations gathered in Marrakesh , Morocco , for a conference intended to give a political lift to the Syrian opposition, which is formally known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. And it came amid an increase in violence in Syria, including reports of a new massacre of about 100 Alawites, Mr. Assad’s sect, and a large bombing in the capital. 
 
 Mr. Obama, in an interview on Tuesday with ABC News, formally recognized the coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people. 
 
 William Burns, the deputy secretary of state who led the American team to the Morocco gathering, said Wednesday that he had invited opposition leaders to Washington, including Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, the coalition leader. 
 
 Mr. Khatib, however, took issue with a decision by the Obama administration to classify Al Nusra Front — one of several armed groups fighting Mr. Assad — as a foreign terrorist organization. 
 
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 “The logic under which we consider one of the parts that fights against the Assad regime as a terrorist organization is a logic one must reconsider,” Mr. Khatib said. “We can differ with parties that adopt political ideas and visions different from ours. But we ensure that the goal of all rebels is the fall of the regime.” 
 
 Obama administration officials have said that the Nusra Front is an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq , the terrorist group that has sought to foment sectarian violence there and topple the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. 
 
 “All of us have seen what Al Qaeda in Iraq tried to do to threaten the social fabric of Iraq ,” Mr. Burns said at a news conference. “And that’s not a future that the vast majority of Syrians want to see, and it’s certainly not a future that the international community supports.” 
 
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 Mr. Burns spoke after a declaration recognizing the new coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people was adopted at the Morocco gathering. It also called on Mr. Assad to “stand aside” to permit a “sustainable political transition.” 
 
 In Damascus on Wednesday, a car bomb and two other explosives went off outside the Interior Ministry headquarters — known as the House of Justice — in Kafar Souseh, on the southern outskirts, Syrian state news media reported. Two Lebanese television channels that favor the Syrian government reported that there had been casualties. One channel, Mayadin, reported that the interior minister, Mohammad al-Shaar, had been wounded, but other accounts said he had escaped unharmed. 
 
 An activist in Damascus, Abu Qays, said Syrian security forces had sealed off Shami Hospital, a central Damascus facility used by Syria’s elite, in a possible indication of high-profile casualties in the blasts. 
 
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 But it was the Scud attacks that caught the attention of American intelligence experts. Scuds are capable of carrying chemical weapons, though American officials emphasized that conventional warheads, not poison gas, had been used in the recent strikes. 
 
 NATO recently approved the deployment of American, Dutch and Germany Patriot antimissile batteries to Turkey , a neighbor of Syria that has become one of Mr. Assad’s most ardent rivals, to protect against a possible Syrian missile attack. The Patriot batteries have not yet arrived in Turkey, and it may take weeks for them to get there. 
 
 An American official said that the Syrian brigade that controls and operates the Scuds was an all-Alawite team. “There’s tremendous sensitivity about that weapon system, so Assad keeps it in the hands of his most trusted agents,” he said. 
 
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 It is not clear whether all of the Scuds struck the base they were aimed at or what casualties they might have caused. But there was military logic to the move, experts said. 
 
 “The Assad regime has consistently escalated its use of force whenever the rebels’ strength has presented a significant challenge to the regime,” Mr. Holliday said. 
 
 “In January 2012, the regime started to use artillery because the rebels learned how to defend against regime ground forces,” he added. “The regime started using its air power in June because the rebels had gained control of the countryside. Now that the rebels have begun to defeat Assad’s air force and overrun his bases, it shouldn’t be surprising that the regime is responding with Scuds.”
– The US will formally recognize Syria's opposition as the country's legitimate representative, Barack Obama announced today in an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC. "It's a big step," Obama said. "We've made a decision that the Syrian Opposition Coalition is now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population" to be recognized. The move allows the US to work more closely with the rebels, and opens up the possibility of sending them weapons—though one official said that wasn't in the cards yet. "Not everybody who is participating on the ground in fighting Assad are people that we are comfortable with," Obama added. "There are some who I think have adopted an extremist agenda." The announcement comes just ahead of a meeting of Syrian opposition leaders and their supporters in Morocco, the New York Times observes. It also notes that the move doesn't fully confer the legal authority of a state; the opposition can't, for example, access Syrian government money or take over the regime's Washington embassy.