Towards direct US intervention in Syria

Obama says there is evidence of chemical weapon use in Syria

United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday that his administration has evidence of chemical weapon use in Syria but remains hesitant to respond with the might of the US military until more details develop.

RT,

30 April, 2013

Last week the White House said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was believed “with varying degrees of confidence” to have used chemical weapons and had “demonstrated a willingness to escalate its horrific use of violence” against the people of his country engaged in a two-year-old civil war. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Pres. Obama upgraded his administration’s stance to say proof of chemical weapon use in Syria is concrete but cannot be directly tied to Pres. Assad’s regime at this time.

“What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don’t know how they were used, when they were used [or] who used them,” said Obama.

The president made the remarks after White House Correspondents Association President Ed Henry asked, “Do you risk US credibility if you don’t take military action?” Obama spent several minutes responding by saying his administration has long opposed the actions of Pres. Assad and has been adamant with his requests for the leader to resign from office.

“I think it’s important to understand that for several years now what we’ve been seeing is a slowly unfolding disaster for the Syrian people. And this is not a situation which we’ve been simply bystanders to what’s been happening. My policy from the beginning has been that President Assad had lost credibility, that he attacked his own people, has killed his own people, unleashed a military against innocent civilians and that the only way to bring stability and peace to Syria is going to be for Assad to step down,” said Obama.

Assad’s regime, added Obama later during the presser, is “more concerned with staying in power than the wellbeing of its people.”

Pres. Obama continued that his administration has taken “a whole host of steps” to weaken the Assad regime, including directly strengthening the Syrian opposition, imposing sanctions on the country and appealing to the United Nations. Should the physiological proof of chemical weapon use link back to Assad, however, the White House and its allies remain willing to escalate their actions against the regime, said Obama.

“The use of chemical weapons would be a game changer. Not simply for the United States but for the international community,” he said Tuesday.

Before the US intervenes, however, the president said more information would have to directly tie Assad’s regime with the use of chemical weapons before he could escalate American efforts overseas.

“When I am making decisions about America’s national security and the potential for taking additional action in response to . . . chemical weapon use, I have to make sure I have the facts. That’s what the American people would expect. And if we end up rushing to judgment without hard effective evidence then we can find ourselves in a position where we can’t mobilize the international community to support what we do.”

“It is important for us to do this in a prudent way. And what I said to my team is we have to do everything that we can to investigate and establish with some certainty,” said Obama.

The president added that he had conversations with the US Department of Defense as early as last year about how to handle the Syrian issue should it intensify, but said, “I won’t go into details as to what those options would be.”

Syria given prominence by RT, but buried in other articles on the Guardian site

Obama edges closer to action over use of chemical weapons in Syria

President tells press briefing 'we have evidence' of use of weapons but says 'what we don't know is who used them'

the Guardian,

30 April, 2013

Barack Obama has made his clearest threat yet of international action against Syria, if the US can confidently establish that Bashar al-Assad's government was responsible for the recent alleged use of chemical weapons in the country.

However, speaking at the White House after days of ambiguous rhetoric from Washington, the president said that he did not yet believe there was sufficient evidence to trace the use of chemical weapons back to President Assad's government.

"What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside Syria," Obama told reporters. "What we don't know is who used them. We don't have a chain of custody. Without evidence of what happened, how can I make a decision what to do? I have got to make sure I have got the facts."

The president made clear that it felt this was important not just to avoid repeating the mistakes made by the US over claims of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but also because it would need to convince more countries to join it in any action against Syria.

"If we rush to judgment without hard evidence we will find ourselves in a position where we cannot mobilise the international community for what we have to do," said Obama. "It is important that we do this in a prudent way."

However, he also admitted that Pentagon and other military planners had since last year been working on a range of options for retaliation, which would be implemented if Washington could establish "a clear base line of facts". Officials in Damascus have insisted publicly that the Syrian government has not been responsible for the use of chemical weapons.

"If I can establish the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in a way that the US and international community can be sure of, that is a game changer," Obama said. "By 'game changer' I mean we would have to review the range of options that are available. There are options at the moment that are on the shelf, but it is a spectrum of options and [use of chemical weapons] clearly would be an escalation of the threat."

Secretary of State John Kerry recently warned members of Congress in private that US military options against Syria are limited. Imposing a no-fly zone would do little to contain the chemical-weapons threat and would also risk exposing US pilots to "highly effective" air defenses. Targeting facilities with special forces or high-temperature incendiary bombs would be difficult, because such facilities are thought to be dispersed.

Politicians briefed by Kerry said they felt the most likely option would be to join allies such as the UK and France in selectively arming certain rebel groups within Syria.

Obama, who has been under pressure from Congress for being slow to act over the Syrian civil war, stressed in Tuesday's press briefing that he had not been standing idly by.

"For several years what we have been seeing is a slowly unfolding disaster for the Syrian people and we have not simply been bystanders," he said. "We are the largest humanitarian donor. We have been providing non-lethal assistance to the rebels. Even if chemical weapons were not being used in Syria we would still be talking about a regime that has killed tens of thousands of its own people."

However, he hinted that any use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would be seen as unacceptable – not just deployment on a large scale.

"Use of chemical weapons would be a game changer," said Obama. "We don't want the genie out of the bottle."

Syrian rebels 'used unknown chemicals’ against civilians in Idlib – state news agency

Syrian opposition fighters have allegedly used unknown chemicals against residents in the town of Saraqib in the northwestern province of Idlib to later put the blame on Assad forces, SANA news agency reports citing a government official.

RT,

30 April, 2013

The source stated that on Monday “terrorists” collected residents of Saraqib near the southern entrance to the town and made them open “plastic bags” containing some unknown powder, SANA reported on Tuesday.

As a result, some people suffered “suffocation, tremors and problems with breathing.”

Later, militants took the injured to hospitals on the territory of Turkey with the goal of accusing President Bashar Assad’s army of using chemical weapons, the official said.

This comes amid growing concerns from the international community about the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria.

In March the Syrian government said the rebels used a rocket with a chemical warhead in Aleppo, in the northwest of the country, killing 25 people and injuring over 80.

The opposition immediately denied the accusations, alleging that regime forces attacked the Khan al-Assal village in Aleppo province with Scud missiles containing chemical agents.

The US and the UN have repeatedly warned Assad’s government against deploying its chemical arms stockpile. Damascus has maintained that it would never use such weapons against its own people.

So far, none of the alleged chemical attacks was officially confirmed and it is unclear who launched the attacks if they did really occur.

The UK and the US claim to have evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria - accusations that Damascus has labeled “barefaced lies.”

“What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don’t know how they were used, when they were used [or] who used them,” President Barack Obama stated on Tuesday.

The UN has been urging the Syrian government to give its fact-finding team full access to sites where chemical weapons allegedly were used. The mission was established after a formal request from the Syrian government to investigate the Aleppo case. However, the team has been on stand-by on in Cyprus after Damascus refused to let them in about three weeks ago.

The reason behind denying them access was that they “do not trust the American and British experts from a political point of view,” Syrian information minister Omran Ahed al-Zouabi told RT. Damascus said it would want to see Russian experts among the team to ensure the investigation would be unbiased.