'We are re-evaluating the situation', says Barack Obama as US waits for evidence of chemical weapons use
The Obama administration is reviewing whether to arm the rebels in Syria, defence secretary Chuck Hagel said on Thursday, becoming the first senior US official to acknowledge the possibility in public.
Hagel said he had not made up his mind about whether opposition groups should be armed, but pressure has been growing in the face of claims that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons in the country's protracted civil war. Speaking later in Mexico, President Barack Obama confirmed his administration was examining all options.
Western governments have been equivocal in their response to the claims about the use of chemical weapons. On Thursday the British defence secertary, Philip Hammond, said the west would have to wait for any further chemical attacks to be sure of Syrian government involvement, because previously gathered evidence had begun to degrade and could not prove a link.
During a Pentagon news conference with Hammond, Hagel said: "Arming the rebels – that's an option. You look at and rethink all options. It doesn't mean you do or you will ... It doesn't mean that the president has decided on anything."
Obama wants to avoid getting the US military involved in Syria so soon after extracting it from Iraq and drawing it down from Afghanistan. But by saying that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would be a "red line", Obama has risked painting the US into a corner. Arming the rebels could be a way to be seen to be acting to stop the bloodshed in Syria without getting too deeply involved.
Hammond warned of the dangers of acting precipitously, saying the public still remembers the claims in 2003 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq turned out to be false.
"There is a very strong view that we have to have very clear, very high-quality evidence before we make plans and act on that evidence," Hammond said. "If there were future use of chemical agents, that would generate new opportunities for us to establish a clear evidence of use to a legal standard."
Speaking on BBC's Newsnight, Hammond said the government would need "incontrovertible" evidence of the use of chemical weapons if they were to be part of an international response.
"Given the experience we have had both in the UK and the US in relation to the Iraq war and the evidence that was presented to support our intervention there, I think it is very clear that our publics would expect us to leave no stone unturned in establishing that the evidence is compelling and conclusive before we take any further action."
Speaking at a news conference in Mexico City, Obama said he supported Hagel's earlier comments. "We are continually evaluating the situation on the ground, working with our international partners to find the best way to move a political transition," he said, speaking alongside the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto. "As we've seen evidence of further bloodshed, potential use of chemical weapons inside of Syria, what I've said is that we're going to look at all options."
Earlier, at the British embassy in Washington, Hammond said western intelligence agencies fear they can no longer prove for certain whether the Syrian government was responsible for alleged chemical weapon attacks. "The confidence that we are seeking degrades over time , and in order to have a properly measured chain of custody we would need to obtain samples after an[other] incident," he said.
Hammond said the process was also complicated because the three alleged uses of nerve gas took place on a small scale. "Experimental or tactical use of weapons is a challenge for us because it is more difficult to validate," he said.
He also revealed that the primary diplomatic effort was now focused on persuading the Russian government to end its support for Assad. "If we can bring the Russians to the point where there is no doubt [over chemical weapons], then there is the prospect of changing the Russian position for support of Syria," he said.
He said the UK had shared its intelligence directly with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, including Russia.
The US National Security Council has authorised Pentagon planners to work with the UK ministry of defence on developing options for military intervention, but Hammond conceded there was a "low level of public appetite for intervention" in both countries. This might change, he suggested, if pictures of mass civilian casualties from a fresh chemical weapons attack by the Syrian regime began to appear on TV screens around the world.
The most likely military response if the evidence hardens would be a decision to provide rebel groups with weapons.
Britain currently supplies non-lethal assistance such as armoured SUVs, body armour and night-vision goggles, while countries such as Saudi Arabia are know to have supplied guns. But Hammond said the significance of a US decision to lift an arms embargo would be to provide international "leadership" for the rebels.
The UK believes the biggest problems with this approach are the risk of arms falling into the wrong hands and the question of whether such a move would be legal. "Persuading the Russians that it is in their interests to address this problem is key because clearing this roadblock would allow the UN to become the forum and clear the legality problem," said Hammond. "The Russians are not as immune as they perhaps used to be to the moral issue in the use of chemical weapons."