August 29, 2013 -- Updated 1948 GMT (0348 HKT)
British Prime Minister David Cameronsays the debate on Syria is about
"how to respond to one of most abhorrent uses of chemical weapons in a
century" -- not about regime change or invasion.
Official: U.S. may take unilateral action against Syria
August 30, 2013 -- Updated 0101 GMT (0901 HKT)
House of Commons votes down Syria measure
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: UK vote raises questions about effect on a possible U.S. timeline
- U.N. Security Council meeting ends without a consensus, diplomat says
- It's "highly likely" Syria's regime is responsible for the chemical weapons attack, UK says
- Remember war dead before rushing to strike us, Syria warns British parliament
Washington will continue
to consult with Britain, but "President Obama's decision-making will be
guided by what is in the best interests of the United States," National
Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement issued
Thursday evening.
The reaction followed
news the House of Commons rebuffed Prime Minister David Cameron's call
for a strong response to claims Syria used chemical weapons against its
own people, raising questions about what, if any, timeline the United
States may follow for a possible strike.
Obama has not spelled out
what steps the United States will take in response to last week's
reported attack against civilians in a Damascus suburb, allegedly
leaving hundreds dead.
"He believes that there
are core interests at stake for the United States and that countries who
violate international norms regarding chemical weapons need to be held
accountable," Hayden said.
Unilateral action was "a
possibility" following the results of the late-night Parliament vote in
London, a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told
CNN.
"We care what they think. We value the process. But we're going to make the decision we need to make," the official said.
The vote among UK lawmakers came after a long day of debate, and it appeared to catch Cameron and his supporters by surprise.
For days, the prime
minister has been sounding a call for action, lending support to talk of
a U.S.- or Western-led strike against Syria.
"I strongly believe in
the need for a tough response to the use of chemical weapons, but I also
believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons," the prime
minister said.
"I get that and the government will act accordingly," he said.
The head of the opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband, called Cameron's call for action "cavalier and reckless."
"I think today the House
of Commons spoke for the British people who said they didn't want a
rush to war, and I was determined we learned the lessons of Iraq and I'm
glad we've made the prime minister see sense this evening," he told
Press Association.
At the United Nations, a
closed-door Security Council meeting ended with no agreement on a
resolution to address the growing crisis in Syria, a Western diplomat
told CNN's Nick Paton Walsh on condition of anonymity.
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"It was clear there was
no meeting of minds, and no agreement on the text. It is clear that our
approaches are very different and we are taking stock (of the next
steps)," the diplomat said of the session, which was called by Syria's
longtime ally, Russia.
The members of the
Security Council expect U.N. weapons inspectors to brief
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon shortly after they depart Syria on
Saturday. Ban, in turn, will swiftly brief the Security Council on the
findings, the diplomat said.
Britain's Joint
Intelligence Committee has concluded it was "highly likely" that Syrian
government forces used poison gas outside Damascus last week in an
attack that killed at least 350 people, according to a summary of the
committee's findings released Thursday.
Speaking in the House of
Commons before the vote, Cameron said failure to respond would undo
"decades of painstaking work" to prevent such weapons from being
unleashed.
"The global consensus
against the use of chemical weapons will be fatally unraveled," he said.
"A 100-year taboo will have been breached."
In Washington, White
House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama was still weighing a potential
response, but said his administration was working on a "compressed
timeline."
U.N. weapons inspectors
are now in Syria trying to confirm the use of chemical weapons. The
inspectors are expected to leave the country by Saturday morning,
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's
government denies using the weapons against opposition forces and says
its troops were the victims, not perpetrators, of recent gas attacks;
but both British and U.S. officials say the rebels have no capability to
use poison gas on the scale of the August 21 attack near Damascus,
which opposition sources said killed more than 1,300.
"There is no credible
intelligence or other evidence to substantiate the claims or the
possession of CW by the opposition," Britain's Joint Intelligence
Committee concluded in a document released Thursday. "The JIC has
therefore concluded that there are no plausible alternative scenarios to
regime responsibility."
Cameron said the debate
was not about regime change or invasion. And he said his government
would not act without first hearing from the U.N. inspectors, giving the
world body a chance to weigh in and giving Parliament another chance to
vote.
But the prime minister
said failing to act would give al-Assad the unmistakable signal that he
could use poison gas "with impunity." The British dossier on Syria also
concluded the government had used chemical weapons on 14 previous
occasions, and Cameron said al-Assad stepped up their use last week as a
sort of test for the world.
The government said
it could justify the use of force against Syria on humanitarian
grounds, to stop the suffering, even if the United Nations declined to
authorize a strike.
"The aim is to relieve
humanitarian suffering by deterring or disrupting the further use of
chemical weapons," the government said.
Syria's government
offered its own arguments against such an intervention. In an open
letter to British lawmakers, the speaker of Syria's parliament riffed on
British literary hero William Shakespeare, saying: "If you bomb us,
shall we not bleed?"
But in a veiled warning
to the United Kingdom, the letter also invoked Iraq, a conflict
justified on the grounds that Iraq had amassed stockpiles of chemical
and biological weapons and was working toward a nuclear bomb -- claims
that were discovered to have been false after the 2003 invasion.
"Those who want to send
others to fight will talk in the Commons of the casualties in the Syrian
conflict. But before you rush over the cliffs of war, would it not be
wise to pause? Remember the thousands of British soldiers killed and
maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the hundreds of thousands
of Iraqi dead, both in the war and in the continuing chaos."
British Commons Speaker
John Bercow published the letter. And al-Assad has vowed to defend his
country against any outside attack.
"The threats of
launching an aggression against Syria will increase its commitments to
its rooted principles and its independent decision that originated from
the will of its people, and Syria will defend itself against any
aggression," the Syrian president said Thursday in a speech to Yemeni
politicians.
Obama faces calls for American vote on force
Across the Atlantic,
Obama said in a televised interview Wednesday that he has no doubt Syria
used chemical weapons on its own people. He said government claims that
the opposition used them were impossible.
"We do not believe that,
given the delivery systems, using rockets, that the opposition could
have carried out these attacks. We have concluded that the Syrian
government in fact carried these out. And if that's so, then there need
to be international consequences," he said on "PBS NewsHour" Wednesday.
Obama said that he has
not made a decision about whether to conduct a military strike in Syria.
A senior administration official said the United States would continue
to consult with British officials, but declined to say if the slowdown
in London would affect U.S. decision-making on Syria.
The president is facing
doubts at home as well: More than 160 members of Congress, including 63
Democrats, have now signed letters calling for either a vote or at least
a "full debate" before any U.S. action.
The author of one of
those letters, Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California, said Obama
should seek "an affirmative decision of Congress" before committing
American forces.
More than 90 members of
Congress, most of them Republican, signed another letter by GOP Rep.
Scott Rigell of Virginia. That letter urged Obama "to consult and
receive authorization" before authorizing any such military action.
Congress is currently in recess until September 9.
CNN's Barbara Starr, Elise Labott, Christine
Theodorou, Holly Yan, Nick Paton Walsh, Jim Acosta, Max Foster and
Bharati Naik contributed to this report.
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