US President Barack Obama said Wednesday he had not yet signed off on a plan to attack Syria
US President Barack Obama said Wednesday he had not yet signed off on a plan to attack Syria, but action appeared likely after Washington stopped seeking a UN mandate.
Political uproar in London, meanwhile, cast doubt on whether Britain will join American military action to punish President Bashar al-Assad's regime for an alleged chemical weapons attack, should the response take place before next week.
A senior White House official told AFP that the administration will brief senior US lawmakers on Thursday about classified intelligence about the chemical attack.
Asked how close he was to ordering a US strike, expected to start with cruise missile raids, Obama told PBS NewsHour: "I have not made a decision." But he warned that US action would be designed to send a "shot across the bow" to convince Syria it had "better not do it again."
He admitted that the limited strikes envisioned by the White House would not stop the killing of civilians in Syria but said he had decided that getting involved in the war would not help the situation.
The US leader, who wants to seal a legacy of ending foreign wars, not getting into new ones, argued that it was vital to send a clear message not just to Syria, but around the world.
"We do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable."
Earlier, Washington bluntly signaled that a UN Security Council resolution proposed by Britain that could have given a legal basis for an assault was going nowhere, owing to Russian opposition.
"We see no avenue forward, given continued Russian opposition to any meaningful Council action on Syria," State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said. "We cannot be held up in responding by Russia's continued intransigence at the United Nations, and quite frankly the situation is so serious that it demands a response," Harf said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron was meanwhile slowed by a parliamentary revolt and was forced to pledge he would not order military action until the report by UN inspectors has been published.
