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| Reuters Photo |
(
Reuters) -
U.N. chemical
weapons investigators crossed Syria's front line into rebel-held
territory on Wednesday for a second visit to the scene of a poison gas
attack that has triggered Western plans for war.
U.S. President Barack Obama and
his European and Middle East allies have already blamed President
Bashar al-Assad for last week's killing of hundreds of civilians. But
the U.N. experts, who were first allowed to cross the front line by
Assad's forces on Monday, are still engaged in gathering evidence.
As long as inspectors remain in
Syria,
Western attacks are improbable, given the risk they would pose to the
team's safety. A Reuters journalist saw U.N. cars leave a hotel in
government-controlled central Damascus. An opposition activist later
said they were starting work in the eastern suburb of Zamalka.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stressed that the inspection team must be given "time to do its job".
With
the price of oil and gold soaring and world stock markets hit by fears
of an unpredictable new phase of the Syrian civil war, which has split
the Middle East on sectarian lines, only the timing of air strikes still
seems in much doubt.
The aim,
governments say, is to punish Assad's use of banned weapons but not, the
White House insists, to impose "regime change" and end a conflict now
in its third year. But Russia and
China, set on blocking U.N. backing, warn that what they see as an illegal assault on a sovereign state could inflame the war.
Having
demanded that Assad end his family's four-decade rule since Syrians
rose up against him during the Arab Spring of 2011, Western powers have
hesitated to arm the rebels, fearing the rise of Islamist militant
groups in their ranks.
In a mark of
the complexities of the region, Assad faces not just retribution from
neighboring countries and the West but from al Qaeda. The Islamic State
in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) said it was launching an operation called
"Volcano of Revenge" that would strike Syrian security forces in
Damascus.
TIMING
No
Western attack, expected to involve cruise missiles fired by U.S. ships
in the Mediterranean, is likely before Obama has a U.S. intelligence
report on the August 21 gas attack on rebel-held suburbs of the capital.
Its conclusions, however, are scarcely in doubt. Numerous officials
have already blamed Assad.
"There
is no doubt who is responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons
in Syria," U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday. "The Syrian
regime."
A spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said he and Obama spoke on Tuesday and had "no doubt" of Assad's guilt.
Air
strikes are unlikely before Cameron has given the British parliament an
opportunity to be seen to support his policy, in a debate scheduled for
Thursday. Like the United States, Britain has warships in the
Mediterranean. It also has an air base on Cyprus, 200 km (120 miles)
from the Syrian coast.
The British
government is not obliged to win a vote but with voters wary of new
military entanglements after over a decade of war in Iraq and
Afghanistan, Cameron, like fellow Western leaders, has no wish to be accused of defying public opinion.
Many
British lawmakers across the political spectrum uneasy about the
prospect of air strikes. A YouGov poll published on Wednesday showed 50
percent of the British public opposed a missile strike on Syria, with
just 25 percent in favor.
OPPOSITION
Rallying international opinion is also a concern.
Russia,
Assad's main arms supplier, has made clear it will not back any U.N.
Security Council resolution of the kind which has given international
legal cover to some previous wars - including the NATO bombing of Libya
two years ago.
Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.N. Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi that
attacking Syria would destabilize the country and the region, the
Foreign Ministry said in Moscow.
Syria's war has heightened tensions between Assad's sponsor
Iran
and Israel, which bombed Syria this year; it has killed over 100,000
and driven millions across borders into Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and
Iraq; and it has fuelled sectarian bloodshed in Lebanon and Iraq, where
bombs killed 44 on Wednesday alone.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that U.S. action would be "a disaster for the region".
China,
too, is wary of what it sees as Western interference in the affairs of
others. The official People's Daily newspaper said air strikes would add
"oil to the flames of Syria's civil war" and added that, as in the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq a decade ago, Washington and its
allies wanted Assad out.
However, Western governments have rallied support from the Arab League and Syria's Muslim neighbor and NATO member
Turkey and have begun to lay out arguments they say show that they can satisfy some criteria of international law.
Australia,
which takes over the chair of the U.N. Security Council on Sunday,
added its voice on Wednesday to the Western view that continuing
deadlock along Cold War lines in the top United Nations body would not
rule out an attack on Syria.
"Everyone's preference would be for action, a response, under United Nations auspices," Foreign Minister Bob Carr said.
"But
if that's not possible, the sheer horror of a government using chemical
weapons against its people, using chemical weapons in any
circumstances, mandates a response."
French
President Francois Hollande has cited a 2005 U.N. provision for action
to protect civilians from their own governments, which was inspired by
the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
Similar arguments were used by NATO to bomb Russian ally Serbia in 1999 after the killing of civilians in Kosovo.
SECURITY
On
Wednesday, as Britain's National Security Council prepared to meet on
Syria, Foreign Secretary William Hague sought to justify an attack on
the grounds of defending Britain's own interests. "We cannot permit our
own security to be undermined by the creeping normalization of the use
of weapons that the world has spent decades trying to control and
eradicate," he wrote in Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Hague
warned that Syria's chemical weapons could "fall into the wrong hands".
It was unclear how a limited campaign of air strikes would address that
- analysts say chemical weapons dumps are unlikely to be bombed for
fear of spreading the toxins.
Critics also argue that defeating Assad may carry greater risks of handing his arsenal to the likes of al Qaeda.
Hague
further said Russian and Chinese opposition at the United Nations would
not prevent military action. "We cannot allow diplomatic paralysis to
be a shield for the perpetrators of these crimes," he wrote.
Syria's government denies gassing its own people and has vowed to defend itself, but people in Damascus are anxious.
"I've
always been a supporter of foreign intervention, but now that it seems
like a reality, I've been worrying that my family could be hurt or
killed," said a woman named Zaina, who opposes Assad. "I'm afraid of a
military strike now."
Opposition
activists have said at least 500 people, and possibly twice that many,
were killed last Wednesday before dawn by rockets carrying the nerve gas
sarin or something similar.
If true, it would be the worst chemical weapons attack since Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Iraqi Kurds in 1988.
(Additional
reporting by Erika Solomon and Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Steve
Gutterman in Moscow and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by Alastair
Macdonald; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
