Assad: military strike on Syria would cause regional war

In an interview with French magazine Le Figaro, President Assad said “the whole world will lose control of the situation, chaos and extremism will spread”. He added: “The risk of a regional war exists.”

As the US and France continue to discuss military intervention in Syria, Nato’s Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he was convinced that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons.

Mr Rasmussen insisted on Monday that a strong reaction is needed to show dictators around the world that such weapons cannot be used with impunity.

He said it was up to individual Nato countries to decide how they would respond to the attack and he did not envisage any Nsto role beyond existing plans to defend member Turkey, which borders Syria.

He said: “I have been presented with concrete information and, without going into details, I can tell you that personally I am convinced, not only that a chemical attack has taken place…, but I am also convinced that the Syrian regime is responsible.”

‘Negative repercussions’

President Assad said there would be “negative repercussions” for France if it joined a US attack on his country and that it would become an enemy. He dismissed claims his regime was responsible for a chemical attack as “illogical”.

In a letter to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, Syrian UN envoy Bashar Ja’afari called on the security council to “maintain its role as a safety valve to prevent the absurd use of force out of the frame of international legitimacy”.

Syria denies using chemical weapons and accuses rebel groups, who have been fighting for more than two years to topple Assad, of using the banned weapons.

At least 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which started in March 2011 with protests against four decades of Assad family rule.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that tests showed sarin nerve gas was fired on rebel-held areas on August 21.

Mr Ja’afari said Mr Kerry had “adopted old stories fabricated by terrorists” based on fake photos from the internet.

Meanwhile Russian MPs will urge the US Congress not to approve any military strikes, the speaker of the upper house of parliament told President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

“I think if we manage to establish a dialogue with our partners in the US Congress… we could possibly better understand each other, and we hope that the US Congress will occupy a balanced position in the end and, without strong arguments in place… will not support the proposal on use of force in Syria,” Valentina Matviyenko said.

‘Sarin and mustard gas’

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault met parliamentary on Monday to discuss the crisis and share with them French intelligence on the 21 August chemical attack.

Foreign affairs committee chief Elisabeth Guigou told France Info that French intelligence pointed to Assad’s forces being behind the attack.

A declassified document from French intelligence services, published by weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, and confirmed as legitimate by a government official, detailed Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, which it said included sarin, VX nerve agent and mustard gas.

The document described Syria’s chemical arsenal as one of the world’s largest, amounting to 1,000 tonnes, and that Syrian scientists had been developing it since the 1980s to enable Damascus to create an autonomous and massive national production programme.

However, French President Francois Hollande’s demands for military action have been criticised in France, after the British parliament voted against carrying out punitive strikes and President Obama said he would seek the approval of Congress.

President Hollande is the army commander in chief under the French constitution and empowered to order an intervention.

I don’t see that holding a vote would make any sense politically Elisabeth Guigou

His sole obligation is to inform parliament within three days of action starting. Only if it were to last more than four months would he be obliged to seek parliamentary approval for it to continue.

With opinion polls showing up to two-thirds of the public would oppose an intervention in Syria, however, several conservative, centrist and green politicians called over the weekend for France to hold a special parliamentary vote.

“In a complicated situation like this, we need to stick to principles, in other words the constitution, which does not oblige the president to hold a vote, nor even a debate,” Ms Guigou, a veteran of the ruling Socialist Party, told France Info radio.

“I don’t see that holding a vote would make any sense politically,” she said, noting France would be left in an impossible situation were parliament to vote in favour of action and then the US Congress to vote against.

Parliament is due to debate the Syria crisis on Wednesday. Conservative former prime minister Francois Fillon and veteran centrist politician Francois Bayrou were among those who say a vote should also be scheduled.

The last time parliament held such a vote was in 1991 when then-Socialist president Francois Mitterrand sought its support for his decision to join the US-led coalition in the Gulf War.

Obama turns to Congress

Meanwhile dozens of Congressmen in the US cut short their holidays on Sunday for an afternoon intelligence briefing on Syria with President Obama’s national security team.

When they emerged nearly three hours later, there was no immediate sign that the many sceptics in Congress had changed their minds. Many questioned the broad nature of the measure President Obama is seeking, suggesting it needed to be narrowed.

“I am very concerned about taking America into another war against a country that hasn’t attacked us,” said Representative Janice Hahn, a California Democrat.

On the way out of the briefing, she said the participants appeared “evenly divided” on whether to give Obama approval.

Most seemed convinced that Syria had engaged in chemical warfare.

“The searing image of babies lined up dead, that’s what I can’t get out of my mind right now,” Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz said after the closed-door briefing.