U.S., French and British missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria’s chemical weapons program on Saturday in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack a week ago, and the three countries insisted they were not aimed at toppling President Bashar al-Assad or intervening in a seven-year civil war Reuters reported
The bombings, hailed by U.S. President Donald Trump as a success but denounced by Damascus and its allies as an act of aggression, marked the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and his ally Russia, whose foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called them “unacceptable and lawless”.
In Damascus, Syria’s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad met inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW for about three hours in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official.
The inspectors were due to try to visit the site of the suspected gas attack. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings before attacking.
As he left the hotel where the meeting took place, Mekdad declined to comment to reporters waiting outside.
British Foreign Secretary (Minister) Boris Johnson defended Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to take part in the attack, saying it was to deter further use of chemical weapons.
“This is not about regime change … This is not about trying to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria,” he told the BBC.
“There is no proposal on the table at the moment for further attacks because so far thank heavens the Assad regime have not been so foolish as to launch another chemical weapons attack.”
“If and when such a thing were to happen, then clearly with allies we would study what the options were,” he said, echoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who told an emergency Security Council meeting that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again, “The United States is locked and loaded.”
Asked if this meant Assad could carry on using barrel bombs and other means in the war provided he did not use chemical weapons, Johnson said that was the “unhappy” consequence.
Assad was determined “to butcher his way” to an overwhelming victory and only the Russians could pressure him to come to the negotiating table in Geneva, Johnson said.
British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the legal basis used to support the British role was debatable, adding that he would only support action backed by the UN Security Council.
“I say to the foreign secretary, I say to the prime minister, where is the legal basis for this?” Corbyn said in an interview with the BBC.
The Western countries blame Assad’s government for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 that killed up to 75 people. Russia, whose ties with the West have sunk to levels of the Cold War-era, denies any gas attack in Douma and said Britain staged it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.