France signaled it might act as the principal U.S. ally in a military strike against Syria, filling a hole left by Britain’s unexpected desertion of President Barack Obama late yesterday.
Hours after British lawmakers pulled the U.K. out of a mission to punish Syria’s use of chemical weapons, French President Francois Hollande said he still favors delivering a targeted blow, bypassing a stalemated United Nations Security Council if necessary.
“There are few countries with the capacity to mete out a sanction using appropriate means,” Hollande said in an interview with Le Monde newspaper published today. “France is among them and is ready.”
Hollande may spare Obama from having to go it alone in launching airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and his support overturns the coalition that fought the Iraq war, which Britain supported and France opposed.
A few hours earlier, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that Obama wants there to be “international collaboration and effort.” Separately, the Obama administration may release an assessment of Syria’s use of chemical weapons as soon as today.
After 2 1/2 years of fighting between Assad and an amalgam of rebel groups claimed more than 100,000 lives, western leaders were jolted from issuing condemnations to weighing intervention following a chemical-weapons assault near Damascus last week.
According to U.S. Assessment hundreds were killed in the attack in the Ghouta area, which the U.S. blamed on Assad or his inner circle. Top Obama lieutenants, including Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry, made the intelligence case to Congressional leaders on a conference call last night.
The administration will release its report on Syria’s chemical capabilities “before the end of the week,” said Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman. A British analysis released yesterday only went so far as to deem it “highly likely” that Assad’s regime was behind last week’s killings.
White House officials have struggled to marshal conclusive evidence backing their assertions that Assad was directly responsible for the massacre, according to three U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified to discuss internal deliberations.
Oil prices fell for a second day as the prospect of imminent foreign intervention receded in a region that supplies about a third of the world’s crude. West Texas Intermediate crude fell as much as 1.9 percent to $106.75 per barrel today.
The UN team sent to gather evidence of use of deadly chemical has not yet submitted its findings and beside, according to Mr William Hague the UN team has no mandate to determine who used it…Rebels fighting the Syrian regime or the Syrian regime themselves….so, on what basis preparation is being done to attack,Syria ? Based on US intel only, just like Iraq WMD which turned out to be false…..why have we become so short in memory and intellectually bankrupt.
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