President Barack Obama said the U.S. must have solid evidence of chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime to rally international support for intervention in that country’s civil war.
Intelligence assessments that chemical munitions were used in Syria have yet to meet the standard to trigger a stronger U.S. response, Obama said today at a White House news conference.
“I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the facts,” he said. “If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective, evidence we can’t mobilize the international community.”
Obama said the U.S. doesn’t have clear evidence yet how the chemical arms were used, when they were used or who deployed them. “We don’t have a chain of custody,” he said.
The revelation in a letter to lawmakers last week of the intelligence assessment has escalated calls from some members of Congress for the U.S. to take further steps, such as imposing a no-fly zone over Syria, to aid rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Most Americans continue to reject the notion that the U.S. has a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll taken April 24-28. Sixty-two percent said the U.S. doesn’t have a responsibility to intervene, while 24 percent saw a responsibility to do something.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday renewed his plea for access to Syria to investigate suspected chemical weapons use, as he prepared to meet in New York with the head of his investigative team.
“A credible and comprehensive inquiry requires full access to the sites where chemical weapons are alleged to have been used,” Ban said in a statement. “I again urge the Syria authorities to allow the investigation to proceed without delay and without any conditions.”
In the latest violence in the conflict, a car bomb in central Damascus killed at least 13 people, Syria’s state television reported, a day after Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi survived a bomb attack in the capital.
More than 70 people were wounded in the explosion in the Marjeh district, according to the report. The device detonated at the gate of the country’s old Interior Ministry building, the Coventry, England-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mailed statement.
Syrian rebels have targeted high-ranking government officials in their two-year fight to topple Assad from power. The anti-Assad uprising has killed more than 70,000 people since it started in March 2011, according to UN estimates.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Dorning in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at [email protected]
Intelligence assessments that chemical munitions were used in Syria have yet to meet the standard to trigger a stronger U.S. response, Obama said today at a White House news conference.
“I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the facts,” he said. “If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective, evidence we can’t mobilize the international community.”
Obama said the U.S. doesn’t have clear evidence yet how the chemical arms were used, when they were used or who deployed them. “We don’t have a chain of custody,” he said.
The revelation in a letter to lawmakers last week of the intelligence assessment has escalated calls from some members of Congress for the U.S. to take further steps, such as imposing a no-fly zone over Syria, to aid rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Most Americans continue to reject the notion that the U.S. has a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll taken April 24-28. Sixty-two percent said the U.S. doesn’t have a responsibility to intervene, while 24 percent saw a responsibility to do something.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday renewed his plea for access to Syria to investigate suspected chemical weapons use, as he prepared to meet in New York with the head of his investigative team.
“A credible and comprehensive inquiry requires full access to the sites where chemical weapons are alleged to have been used,” Ban said in a statement. “I again urge the Syria authorities to allow the investigation to proceed without delay and without any conditions.”
In the latest violence in the conflict, a car bomb in central Damascus killed at least 13 people, Syria’s state television reported, a day after Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi survived a bomb attack in the capital.
More than 70 people were wounded in the explosion in the Marjeh district, according to the report. The device detonated at the gate of the country’s old Interior Ministry building, the Coventry, England-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mailed statement.
Syrian rebels have targeted high-ranking government officials in their two-year fight to topple Assad from power. The anti-Assad uprising has killed more than 70,000 people since it started in March 2011, according to UN estimates.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Dorning in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at [email protected]