military help from russia. russia may have listened to this and said we can t see the assad regime fall. the obama administration doesn t want the assad regime to fall quickly, because then there will be this chaotic fight between the free syrian army that s not quite ready t take over, and very powerful groups like isis battling it out. so, interesting. so you see this as sort of an admission that assad is weaker than he admitted. but what is the end game? if you ve got the russians going in to help the syrians. you ve also got the iranians who are there as a partner as well. does this mean isis is getting much stronger, bob? or does this mean simply that the russians have a very different end game in sight? well, i think there s a bit of a panic in moscow as well as damascus. the islamic state is moving what i call an offensive along the turkish border. it s moving in the regime-held areas. the syrian regime doesn t have the troops to hold them back.
let me ask you this, also. of course the question of the u.n. security council and russia s veto vote there has been important. what about china? is there a reason to believe that china will be on board with these new sort of rules? r. reporter: i think so. china has always been pretty low key with its diplomacy, and that s been the case with this as well, coming out against military action but also saying it believed in the eradication of chemical weapons. my sense is that a security council resolution that codifies what we ve seen today and implies sanctions or some action if the syrian regime doesn t fully comply but falls short of spelling that out because the russians won t go along with a clear military threat. beneath ler the chine neither chinese. there is a wider agenda with iran next door with north korea.
it s the top of the hour. i m gary tuchman in for suzanne malveaux. let s get you up to speed. george zimmerman has a status hearing just a few minutes from now. he s not expected to appear in court for it. he also has a bond hearing set for next week. zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of trayvon martin. zimmerman says it was self-defense. the affidavit says he quote profiled the teenager and disregarded a police dispatcher s order not to pursue him. thousands of syrians shouting against the government are testing the cease-fire that went into effect yesterday. so far day two is relatively calm. we are hearing though about small clashes and some civilian casualties. syrian forces and rebel fighters are for the most part keeping their promise to stop shooting at each other. north korea s long-range rocket launch was a big failure, but world leaders are worried about what could come next. the u.n. secretary-general believes north korea m
i think if the syrian regime doesn t get in now i think that turkey will stay there and try to get rich off the p.k. so if you have a look on a friend who s living there we see that we have about three hundred fifty thousand people living in a free and well yes to billions of of course civilians. and in the will interest interestingly about one hundred thousand of them not kurds but arabs mostly refugees of course so this is the civilian population and then we have the y.p. gee they re the most syrian military branch of the p.k. k. which is for several years at ministering the region and many of the currents living there particularly would like to get rid of the y.p. g. because it doesn t have a good record on human rights but of course they don t want to have turkey in there and they don t want to have the regime in there too but we ve seen these very dramatic images earlier from eastern how to if there s