French PM: Assad could strike again if no one acts

PARIS — France's prime minister made a passionate appeal yesterday for intervention in Syria, placing the blame for a chemical attack on Syrian President Bashar Assad and warning that inaction would let him carry out more atrocities.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault addressed the French National Assembly at the beginning of a debate on the wisdom and necessity of a French military response. yesterday's debate will end without a vote — since President Francois Hollande can order a military operation without one — but it was part of his government's delicate dance to rev up support at home for an unpopular intervention.

The French debate also offered a preview of the challenges ahead for the Obama administration when the US Congress debates Syria next week.

The US and France accuse Assad's government of using chemical weapons in an Aug. 21 attack on rebel-held suburbs of Damascus that killed hundreds of people. Obama and Hollande are pushing for a military response to punish Assad for his alleged use of poison gas against civilians — although US officials say any action will be limited in scope and not aimed at helping to remove Assad.

The French government is in a particularly difficult situation, with many opposition party members claiming that the Socialist Hollande is merely acting as a lapdog for the US, the only other major power considering a Syrian military intervention.

Ayrault was careful to say that his certainty about the facts of the attack comes from French sources. But he mentioned for the first time a death toll of nearly 1,500 — which is around what the Americans have cited.

"The Syrian regime carries the entire responsibility" for the attack, said Ayrault. "Not to react would be to send a terrible message to Bashar Assad and to the Syrian people: Chemical weapons can used tomorrow again, against Damascus, against Aleppo, maybe even in a bigger way."

Ayrault said a punitive military response would help shift the balance in a 2 ½-year-old civil war — which was tipping in favor of Assad — and was the only way to convince the Syrian leader he must go to the negotiating table.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of Assad's most vocal supporters, warned the West against taking any one-sided action in Syria.

In an interview late Tuesday, Putin told The Associated Press that Russia "doesn't exclude" supporting a UN resolution on punitive military strikes against Syria if it is proved that Damascus used poison gas on its own people. Still he questioned the proof released by Britain, the United States and France as part of their efforts to build international support for a military strike.

Any proof needs to go before the UN Security Council, Putin told the AP. "And it ought to be convincing. It shouldn't be based on some rumors and information obtained by special services through some kind of eavesdropping, some conversations and things like that."

He did say, however, that Russia had frozen new shipments to Syria of an air defense missile system.

On Tuesday, the White House won backing for military action from two powerful Republicans — House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and House majority leader Eric Cantor.

In Syria, the Al-Baath newspaper, the mouthpiece of the country's ruling Baath party, branded American lawmakers who backed military action against Syria as "advocates of war and terrorism."

"When the Obama administration seeks a broader mandate from Congress, which it basically does not need, this means that it prepares itself for what is bigger and more dangerous," the paper said in an editorial yesterday.

In Paris, Hollande said the US vote "will have consequences on the coalition that we will have to create." He did not specify whether that meant a military coalition.

Fabius on yesterday acknowledged the US vote was crucial.

"If the United States backed off — which I don't plan on, but anything can happen — this type of action wouldn't be possible and so we would have to consider the Syrian question in another way," he said.

Syria's parliament speaker sent a letter to his French counterpart ahead of yesterday's debate, urging lawmakers not to make any "hasty" decisions. Syrian lawmakers sent a similar letter to Britain ahead of a parliamentary vote there that rejected military action against Syria.

The Syrian conflict, which began as a popular uprising against Assad in March 2011, has degenerated into a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people. The two sides have fought to a stalemate, although the Assad regime has retaken the offensive in recent months. Rebel fighters control large rural stretches in northern and eastern Syria, while Assad is holding on to most of the main urban areas.

The UN refugee agency, meanwhile said the number of Syrians who have fled the country has surpassed 2 million. Along with more than four million people displaced inside Syria, this means more than six million Syrians have been uprooted out of an estimated 23 million people.

In a joint statement in Geneva on yesterday, officials from Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and the UN high commissioner for refugees urgently appealed for greater international support for the refugees. Together, the four countries are harboring more than 1.8 million Syrian refugees.