Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says there’s now overwhelming evidence the Syrian regime was behind a deadly chemical attack on its own people, and has warned it could do it again.
Rudd said Syria had committed what was arguably a crime against humanity.
“Our belief is that the Syrian regime is responsible for these chemical weapons attacks against the Syrian people,” he told reporters in Melbourne.
“We are confident of those conclusions. The evidence in our judgements is now overwhelming.”
Rudd, who was briefed about Syria by intelligence and foreign affairs officials in Canberra on Thursday morning, said there must be a robust international response.
“In the absence of such a response, the problem is this – the regime could then take succour that it could do this again.
“We do not believe that is the right course of action.”
Rudd said if Syria was seen to be able to get away with such an attack, other regimes could believe they could do the same.
He said what the Syrian regime had done was in grave breach of the 1925 Geneva Convention on use of chemical weapons as well as the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention.
“These are the most flagrant breaches,” he said
Earlier, US President Barack Obama says he has not yet decided whether to attack Syria, but that any US action will be a warning that “it better not” use chemical arms again.
Obama said On Wednesday that his government had concluded that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was behind the horrific attack on civilians in a Damascus suburb last week that killed hundreds of people.
But he clearly signaled that expected US punitive strikes would be limited in scope, and would not be an attempt to tip the balance between Assad’s forces and rebels who have waged a bloody two-year civil war.
“I have not made a decision,” Obama told PBS NewsHour, when asked how close he was to signing off on US military action against Syria.
Obama said however that he had concluded that “direct military engagement, involvement in the civil war in Syria, would not help the situation on the ground.”
Given that limited vision for US military action in the country, Obama was asked what would be the strategic rationale behind a US assault, likely to take place with cruise missiles fired from US and allied ships and submarines.
He said that by the end of the engagement, the Syrian government “will have received a pretty strong signal that it better not do it again.”
– with AFP
