France Urges ‘Force’ in Syria if Chemical Attacks Are Confirmed
PARIS — As Western powers pressed the Syrian authorities to permit United Nations inspectors to examine the site of a claimed poison gas attack outside Damascus, France said on Thursday that outside powers should respond “with force” if the use of chemical weapons was confirmed.
At the same time, Israel said its intelligence assessments pointed to the use of chemical weapons.
“According to our intelligence assessments there was use of chemical weapons,” the Israeli minister of strategic and intelligence affairs and international relations, Yuval Steinitz, told Israel Radio, “and this of course was not for the first time.”
Mr. Steinitz did not specifically accuse the government of President Bashar al-Assad of using chemical weapons on Wednesday, but in the past Israel has frequently accused pro-Assad forces of using weapons from its large stockpiles of such munitions.
In April, Israel’s senior military intelligence analyst, Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, told participants at a security conference in Tel Aviv that the Syrian government had “increasingly used chemical weapons.” General Brun said at the time that, “The very fact that they have used chemical weapons without any appropriate reaction is a very worrying development, because it might signal that this is legitimate.”
In an interview with BFM-TV television, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, expressly ruled out the idea of ground forces intervening in Syria’s bloody civil war, now in its third year with more than 100,000 fatalities.
“There would have to be reaction with force in Syria from the international community,” Mr. Fabius said, but added, “there is no question of sending troops on the ground.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/world/middleeast/syria.html?_r=0#h[]
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