Obama calls for US and international support on Syria

President Barack Obama pushed for international support for military action against Syria over the alleged use of chemical weapons as US senators took a first step towards approving intervention.

Mr Obama made a passionate plea for domestic and foreign support to attack Syria as the Senate foreign relations committee voted 10 to seven in a divided vote on a resolution authorising his administration's use of force against Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The support came after Republican senator John McCain, who is pushing Mr Obama to go beyond his planned “limited” strikes to help remove Assad from power, tabled an amendment in the resolution aiming to “change the momentum on the battlefield” to force Assad to a settlement ending the conflict and paving the way for a democratic government.

Mr McCain, one of the more hawkish Republicans, had opposed an earlier version allowing a “limited and tailored” military action against Syria not exceeding 90 days and involving no US troops on the ground in combat without reference to a broader US strategy on Syria’s civil war.

The decision on military action will now move to a full vote by all senators.

'Red-line' legacy
Speaking in Sweden, Mr Obama tried to deflect attention from the statement he made last year that chemical weapons use would be a "red line", comments that plague his approach to Syria's civil war.

Mr Obama said he didn’t “pluck” the line “out of thin air”, that it was a line first drawn by countries around the world and by the US Congress when they agreed a ban on chemical weapons.

“I didn’t set a red line,” he said. “The world set a red line.” He rejected that his credibility was on the line, saying “the international community’s credibility is on the line”.

If the world didn’t respond to Assad’s regime over what the US has claimed is the use of chemical weapons, then it would send a message that authoritarian regimes “can continue to act with impunity”.

“The moral thing to do is not to stand by and do nothing,” he said.

Mr Obama said that his decision to seek congressional support for action was not “an empty exercise”, but he reserved his right to act without approval “on behalf of America’s national security”.

The president is trying to build international support for his plan to strike against the Assad regime over a sarin gas attack the US claims his forces were responsible for on a suburb in eastern Damascus. It caused 1,429 deaths, including more than children.

While Mr Obama travelled to Sweden ahead of visiting Russia for the G20 summit of world leaders in St Petersburg today, senior members of his administration made the public case for action for a second day in testimony before a congressional committee, this time in the House of Representatives.

Secretary of state John Kerry urged the influential House foreign affairs committee to back action, saying that the world's nations "want to know whether or not America is going to rise to this moment".

Red-stained hands
As Mr Kerry spoke, anti-war demonstrators held red-stained hands in the air, protesting against the administration's proposed action against Syria that is dividing public and political opinion.

Despite Republican and Democratic House leaders publicly backing military action, conservative Republicans and anti-war Democrats oppose it, making the support of the House far from assured.

Further claims about Assad’s involvement in the August 21st chemical weapons attack were published when German intelligence, citing an intercepted call believed to be between Lebanese militant group Hizbullah and the Iranian embassy in Damascus, said the Syrian president ordered the gas attack.

Reuters reported that the head of the BND foreign intelligence agency told German lawmakers that Assad was said to have considered the attack a mistake, showing he was losing his grip in the war.