OBAMA PUT ACTION AGAINST SYRIA ON HOLD
A day after Syria agreed
with a Russian proposal to surrender its chemical weapons, a skeptic US
President Barack Obama today said he would keep the military on high alert to
attack the embattled Syrian regime if diplomacy fails to yield any result.
Obama, facing implacable opposition to a military intervention in Syria in the
US Congress and from war-weary Americans, termed the Russian proposal to place
Syria's chemical weapons under international control as an "encouraging"
sign. He, however, said he would hold off on military action for now to pursue
the initiative. Addressing to the nation from the White House, Obama said he
would also discuss it with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who has been
opposing any military action against Syria without UN approval. "It's too
early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify
that the Assad regime keeps its commitments," Obama said. "But this
initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without
the use of force." Analysts say Obama's 16-minute address was a frank
acknowledgement of how radically the political and diplomatic landscape had
shifted in just a few days. Obama also asked the Senate to put off a vote on his
request for an authorisation of military force to let the diplomacy play out.
He set no timetables for action, but said any deal with Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad would require verification that he keeps his word. Obama again accused
Assad, who celebrated his 48th birthday today, of being responsible for gassing
to death over 1,000 people, including hundreds of children on August 21.
"When dictators commit atrocities, they depend upon the world to look the
other way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory. But these things
happened. The facts cannot be denied. "The question now is what the US,
and the international community, is prepared to do about it. Because what
happened to those people - to those children - is not only a violation of international
law, it's also a danger to our security, he said. His speech was planned as
Obama's final push to win support from a sceptical public and Congress for his
planned strike to punish Syria for what US says was the use of chemical weapons
against civilians.
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