The United States set the stage on Monday for a possible military intervention against the Syrian regime in response to the alleged chemical attack against civilians, which occurred last week near Damascus, considered by Washington “undisputed”. UK prepares plans for possible military action in Syria, announced Tuesday Downing Street.
“Chemical weapons were used in Syria,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, adding: “What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality. The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it was inexcusable.”
The chemical weapons have killed more than 1,000 people in Ghouta on 21 August, according to the Syrian opposition.
Without naming those responsible for this attack, Kerry assured that “President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people.”
According to the White House and State Department, the use of chemical weapons in Syria is an established fact, and there is little doubt as to their origin, while the Damascus regime and rebels accuse each other of committing the attack.
However, according to Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, Assad’s government has control over chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria and is the only one that has the ability to disperse these chemical weapons. Also Carney assured that the area where the alleged chemical attack occurred was bombed Monday to destroy evidence.
Obama has not yet made a decision on the U.S. reaction, said Carney, but “He is evaluating the appropriate response. You will hear from him about that. We will make it clear to the public what our views are and what our actions will be.”
Rome rejected the possibility of military action in Syria without UN mandate: Italy on Tuesday rejected the possibility of military intervention in Syria without the UN Security Council, saying that the only option is “a negotiated political solution,” reports AFP.
“Intervention in Syria without UN Security Council approval is not feasible,” said Yesterday Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino.
The Minister announced that a meeting of the Security Council was proposed for Wednesday, while NATO will have talks about Syria on Thursday in Brussels. She also announced that Syrian Friends countries and the Syrian opposition group will meet on September 4, during a ministerial meeting, but she did not specify the place of the meeting.
“Even a limited intervention runs the risk of becoming unlimited. We must think it over a thousand times,” said Bonino, adding that Italy is “already engaged” in military terms in other regions of the world, especially in Afghanistan.
However, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said that Italian air and naval bases could be used by other countries for an attack, subject to approval by Parliament.
This approval is not necessary, however, for the U.S. military base in Sigonella, Sicily. Under a bilateral Italian-American agreement, Italian military bases were used extensively during the Western intervention in Libya in 2011.
At the end of a meeting Monday evening, the Italian government said that the Syrian regime has passed the “point of no return”, but insists that any response must be decided at the multilateral level.
Hagel: “We are ready to go” if Obama decides so on Syria
U.S. armed forces are “ready” to launch strikes on Syria, if President Barack Obama orders the attack, said Tuesday for BBC Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, accusing Damascus for using “chemical weapons.”
“We have moved assets in place to be able to fulfil and comply with whatever option the president wishes to take,” said Hagel.
“We are ready to go,” said the head of the Pentagon, who is currently on a diplomatic tour in Southeast Asia.
He added that the United States will soon present evidence of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Syria has used chemical weapons against its own people, said Hagel.
“But we’ll wait and determine what the facts and the intelligence bear out,” U.S. Secretary continued, in an interview with the BBC, from Brunei.
After talking with the British and French counterparts on Tuesday, Hagel previously said that “most countries” believe that the Syrian regime has committed the attack near Damascus on August 21 that resulted, according to the opposition, with over people 1,300 dead.
UK prepares plans for possible military action in response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, announced Tuesday a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron.
“I think the intelligence will conclude that it wasn’t the rebels who used it, and there’ll probably be pretty good intelligence to show is that the Syria government was responsible. We are currently in discussions with our international partners about what the right response is.” No decision has been made but we are making contingency plans with the Armed Forces,” said the spokesman.
“It’s about examining how to prevent the use of chemical weapons because it is something totally despicable and contrary to international law,” he added.
“We have been clear that all the evidence that we have seen suggests that this is the work of the Assad regime,” the spokesman continued.
David Cameron, who cut short his holiday and Tuesday was at Downing Street, discussed in recent days with several world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Barack Obama and French President François Hollande. He will continue discussions to decide a “proportionate response” to the attack in Syria on 21 August, the spokesman said.
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