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August 22nd, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Updated
France says the international community will need to respond with force if allegations that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical attack on civilians prove true.
The Syrian opposition claims as many as 1,300 people were killed in pre-dawn shelling of rebel-held areas outside Damascus on Wednesday.
Video footage posted online, which can not be immediately verified, shows people apparently convulsing and struggling for breath.
“There would have to be reaction with force in Syria from the international community, but there is no question of sending troops on the ground,” foreign minister Laurent Fabius told French television network BFM on Thursday.
If the UN Security Council could not make a decision, one would have to be taken “in other ways,” he said, without elaborating.
Chemical weapons in Syria:
Syria is understood to have the third largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world – including sarin and other nerve gases.
It is also one of the few countries not to have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention alongside Angola, Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan.
Amid accusations by Syrian activists that forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad have used nerve gas to kill more than 200 people, we look back over similar allegations made during the conflict.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, also urged action, telling reporters during a trip to Berlin that “all red lines” had been crossed in Syria.
His German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle, demanded Syria grant UN chemical weapons experts immediate access to verify claims of chemical weapons use.
Opposition activists accused Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces of gassing hundreds, including women and children, in Wednesday’s attack.
What would be the world’s most lethal chemical weapons attack since the 1980s led to an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in New York.
The council did not explicitly demand a UN investigation of the incident, although it said “clarity” was needed and welcomed UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s calls for a prompt investigation by a UN inspection team already in Syria.
The council’s statement was watered down to accommodate objections from Russia and China, diplomats said.
Moscow and Beijing have vetoed previous Western efforts to impose UN penalties on Assad.
Mr Fabius, who had a working dinner with his British counterpart William Hague in Paris on Wednesday night (local time) to discuss Syria, said the alleged attack had come almost exactly a year after US president Barack Obama warned that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a red line.
The attack highlighted the sense of impunity within Assad’s government, he said.
Mr Fabius says if Assad refuses to let the UN inspection team investigate the site, he will have been caught with “his hand in the till”.
Rudd says allegations ‘repugnant beyond description’
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says Australia has co-authored a letter to Mr Ban, urging him to send teams to Syria to “establish the facts”.
“The use of weapons of mass destruction in any circumstances is intolerable and unacceptable in any civilised nation,” he told a press conference.
“When weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons, are used against civilian targets, it is repugnant beyond description.”
Washington has previously described chemical weapons use as a red line that might prompt it to intervene militarily in Syria.
Mr Rudd says if the allegations prove to be accurate, world powers should act.
“I think all countries in the world would have a view that in the year 2013, if there is a factual basis to any regime in the world using chemical weapons against people, frankly we enter into a new level of barbarism and therefore all civilised nations in the world have a responsibility then to act,” he said.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says if true, the “utterly reprehensible” allegations would constitute a crime against humanity.
“I think it is important that the international community do what it reasonably can to try and bring a measure of peace and justice to that tragically war-torn country,” he said.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr has also hinted the use of chemical weapons would necessitate action.
“No member of the world community can stand idly by if there is evidence of the use of chemical weapons to produce mass atrocities,” he said.
ABC/Reuters
Topics:
unrest-conflict-and-war,
defence-and-national-security,
government-and-politics,
world-politics,
foreign-affairs,
syrian-arab-republic,
france,
australia
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Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-22/france-says-force-needed-if-syrian-chemical-attack-proved-true/4906384
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