[Complicating the task of the United Nations team is the fact that the attack on Wednesday took place in an area that remains behind rebel lines. While activists reached in the area said they would welcome the team, many are deeply skeptical that its work will result in action against Mr. Assad’s government. The team’s original mandate was limited to finding whether chemical weapons had been used, not to decide who has used them.]
By Scott Shane and Ben Hubbard
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Reuters
A man holds the body of a dead child after what activists claim was a
chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus on Wednesday
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WASHINGTON — Moving a step closer to possible American military action in Syria, a senior Obama administration official said Sunday that there was “very little doubt” that President Bashar al-Assad’s military forces had used chemical weapons against civilians last week and that a Syrian promise to allow United Nations inspectors access to the site was “too late to be credible.”
The official, in a written statement, said that “based on the reported number of victims, reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured, witness accounts and other facts gathered by open sources, the U.S. intelligence community, and international partners, there is very little doubt at this point that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime against civilians in this incident.”
The statement, released Sunday morning on the condition that the official not be named, reflected a tougher tone after President Obama’s meeting at the White House on Saturday with his national security team, during which advisers discussed options for military action.
While administration officials emphasized that Mr. Obama had not decided to take action, they said he was determined not to be drawn into a protracted debate over gaining access for the United Nations investigators, because of doubts that they could now produce credible findings.
Officials say that a list of possible targets for a military strike has been circulating in the White House since late last week. The list, which the Pentagon originally prepared months ago for Mr. Obama, includes both chemical-weapons sites and broader military and government targets, depending on the type of action the president orders. If strikes are carried out, the targets would probably be hit by cruise missiles fired from Navy ships.
The president, who warned a year ago that the use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces would be a “red line,” has faced criticism from Congressional Republicans and others for failing to respond more forcefully to evidence of earlier, smaller-scale chemical attacks. Mr. Obama, who inherited two costly wars — in Iraq and Afghanistan — has been extremely reluctant to commit American military forces, even in the form of missile strikes, to another tangled conflict in the Middle East.
But on Sunday, the White House seemed to take a harder line, dismissing the Syrian promise of possible access by United Nations inspectors.
Mr. Obama spoke on Sunday with the French president, François Hollande, and the White House said they had expressed “grave concern” about the reported Syrian chemical attack and “discussed possible responses by the international community.” Mr. Obama spoke on Saturday to the British prime minister, David Cameron.
Those discussions, officials said, were meant to gauge whether Britain and France are on the same page as the United States, given that they could be part of a coalition carrying out strikes against Syria.
While officials said the United States would still hold consultations at the United Nations, they made it clear that the United Nations was not the only avenue for taking action against Syria.
Early on Sunday, the White House said Syrian officials had refused to let the inspectors see the site of the attack. But Syrian television later reported an agreement to allow access beginning on Monday. The administration official who released the statement said the offer, even if sincere, might be meaningless because of the time that had already passed since the attack.
“The evidence available has been significantly corrupted as a result of the regime’s persistent shelling and other intentional actions over the last five days,” the official said.
The official, however, did not suggest that Mr. Obama had decided to take action. “We are continuing to assess the facts so the president can make an informed decision about how to respond to this indiscriminate use of chemical weapons,” the official said.
But by labeling as “indiscriminate” the attack on Wednesday in a Damascus suburb, which reportedly killed hundreds of civilians, the official suggested that the United States viewed the latest assault as different from the smaller suspected chemical attacks that had not provoked American military action.
The Syrian government has denied using chemical weapons as part of a civil war that has left more than 100,000 people dead. On Saturday it said its soldiers had found chemical supplies in areas seized from rebel forces. Russia, an ally of the Syrian government, accused the rebels of using the weapons, but few analysts believe they have the supplies or ability to do so.
A spokesman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Aleksandr K. Lukashevich, said that those who advocated an armed response to any chemical weapons attack — without citing the United States or other countries — were prejudging the results of the United Nations inspections.
“In these conditions, we again resolutely call on all those who are trying to impose the results of the U.N. investigations and who say that armed actions against Syria is possible to show common sense and avoid tragic mistakes,” Mr. Lukashevich said in a statement released Sunday evening on the ministry’s Web site.
But Secretary of State John Kerry called Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia on Sunday to outline the Obama administration’s stance on Syria.
Mr. Kerry told his Russian counterpart that there was little doubt that the Assad government had used chemical weapons against civilians last week and the decision to allow United Nations inspectors to visit the site of the attack had come too late.
Mr. Kerry told Mr. Lavrov “that if the Syrian regime wanted to prove to the world that it had not used chemical weapons in this incident, it would have stopped shelling the area and granted immediate access five days ago,” a senior State Department official said.
Syria warned that any American military action would “create a ball of fire that will inflame the Middle East,” according to The Associated Press. And Iranian state news media quoted the Tehran government as saying that any intervention by Washington would have severe consequences.
Complicating the task of the United Nations team is the fact that the attack on Wednesday took place in an area that remains behind rebel lines. While activists reached in the area said they would welcome the team, many are deeply skeptical that its work will result in action against Mr. Assad’s government. The team’s original mandate was limited to finding whether chemical weapons had been used, not to decide who has used them.
Israel sharpened its message on Sunday, suggesting that the use of such weapons in the region should not go without a response.“This situation must not be allowed to continue,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, referring to the Syrian civilians “who were so brutally attacked by weapons of mass destruction.”
“The most dangerous regimes in the world must not be allowed to possess the most dangerous weapons in the world,” he said.
Some Israelis have argued that international intervention in Syria would distract the world from the crucial effort to prevent a nuclear Iran. But there is a growing sense among Israelis that Syria is now a test of how the world might respond to Iran as it approaches the ability to make a nuclear weapon.
“Assad’s regime has become a full Iranian client, and Syria has become Iran’s testing ground,” Mr. Netanyahu added. In Washington, several lawmakers said Sunday that they now expected limited military action to punish Syria or deter chemical attacks.
But lawmakers who appeared on Sunday talks show said it would be reckless to insert ground troops into a war in a region already in turmoil, and there was a general call for any action to be taken under the broadest possible international auspices.
“I hope the president, as soon as we get back to Washington, will ask for authorization from Congress to do something in a very surgical and proportional way,” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
But Representative Eliot Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the situation might be too urgent to wait for Congress, which does not return from its summer recess until Sept. 9. On Saturday, Doctors Without Borders, an international aid group, said that on the morning of the reported attack, medical centers it supported near the site received about 3,600 patients showing symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic nerve agents. Of those, 355 died, the group said.
