Obama Wins Backing From Key Congressmen For Strike In Syria.

Reuters) - President Barack Obama won the backing of
key figures in the U.S. Congress, including Republicans,
in his call for limited U.S. strikes on Syria to punish
President Bashar al-Assad for his suspected use of
chemical weapons against civilians.
Speaking after the United Nations said two million
Syrians had fled a conflict that posed the greatest
threat to world peace since the Vietnam war, Obama
said the United States also has a broader plan to help
rebels defeat Assad's forces.
In remarks that appeared to question the legality of U.S.
plans to strike Syria without U.N. backing, Secretary-
General Ban Ki-moon said the use of force is only legal
when it is in self-defense or with Security Council
authorization.
If U.N. inspectors confirm the use of chemical weapons
in Syria, the Security Council, which has been
deadlocked on the 2-1/2-year Syrian civil war, should
overcome its differences and take action, Ban said.
Having startled friends and foes alike by delaying a
punitive attack on Assad until Congress reconvenes and
agrees, Obama met congressional leaders at the White
House to urge a prompt decision and assure them it did
not mean another long war like Iraq or Afghanistan.
John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the U.S. House
of Representatives, and House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor both pledged their support for military action
after the meeting.
Votes are expected to be held in the Senate and House
next week, with the Republican-led House presenting
the tougher challenge for Obama.
The House leadership has indicated the votes will be
"conscience votes," meaning they will not seek to
influence members' votes on party lines. All the same, it
would have been a blow to Obama if he had not
secured the backing of the top two Republicans.
"I believe that my colleagues should support this call for
action," Boehner told reporters.
The president said strikes aimed at punishing the use of
chemical weapons would hurt Assad's forces while
other U.S. action would bolster his opponents - though
the White House has insisted it is not seeking "regime
change."
"What we are envisioning is something limited. It is
something proportional. It will degrade Assad's
capabilities," Obama said. "At the same time we have a
broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the
capabilities of the opposition."
Assad denies deploying poison gas that killed hundreds
of civilians last month.
The Syrian opposition, which said a forensic scientist
had defected to the rebel side bringing evidence of the
Assad forces' use of sarin gas in March, has appealed to
Western allies to send them weapons and use their air
power to end a war that has killed more than 100,000
and made millions homeless.
ACCELERATING HUMAN COST
The presence in rebel ranks of Islamist militants, some
of them close to al Qaeda, has made Western leaders
wary, while at the same time the undoubted - and
apparently accelerating - human cost of the conflict has
brought pressure to intervene.
Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi also voiced support
for military strikes after meeting Obama, but he will still
have to persuade some lawmakers, including Democrats,
who have said they are concerned the president's draft
resolution could be too open-ended.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of
Defence Chuck Hagel took the administration's message
to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, where
they were pressed on whether the resolution put to
Congress would explicitly rule out the use of ground
troops.
Kerry said the language of the resolution was still being
worked out, but it was important to leave options open
for using troops in a scenario where "Syria imploded"
and stockpiles of chemical weapons needed to be
secured from extremists.
"I don't want to take off the table an option that might
or might not be available to the president of the United
States to secure our country," he said at the hearing.
When some senators objected to the idea of "boots on
the ground", Kerry said the administration would work
with Congress to draft a resolution that addressed
concerns about ground troops.
"I know the administration has zero intention of putting
troops on the ground and within the confines of this
authorization, I'm confident we'd have zero problem
with including some kind of prohibition there if that
makes you comfortable," he told the senators.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday that Obama
has failed so far to convince most Americans. Some 56
percent of those surveyed said the United States should
not intervene in Syria, while only 19 percent supported
action, essentially unchanged from last week.
The U.N. High Commission for Refugees said there had
been a near tenfold increase over the past 12 months in
the rate of refugees crossing Syria's borders into
Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon - to a daily average of
nearly 5,000 men, women and children.
This has pushed the total number of Syrians living
abroad to more than 2 million.
That represents some 10 percent of Syria's population,
the UNHCR said. With a further 4.25 million estimated
to have been displaced but still resident inside the
country, close to one third of all Syrians are living away
from their original homes.
Comparing the figures to the peak of Afghanistan's
refugee crisis two decades ago, U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, said:
"Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a
disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and
displacement unparalleled in recent history.
"The risks for global peace and security that the present
Syria crisis represents, I'm sure, are not smaller than
what we have witnessed in any other crisis that we
have had since the Vietnam war," said Guterres, a
former Portuguese prime minister.
Russia, backed by China, has used its veto power in the
U.N. Security Council three times to block resolutions
condemning Assad's government and threatening it with
sanctions. Assad, like Russia, blames the rebels for the
August 21 gas attack.
OBAMA "COMFORTABLE" WITHOUT U.N.
Obama has said he is "comfortable going forward
without the approval of a United Nations Security
Council that so far has been completely paralyzed and
unwilling to hold Assad accountable.
Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari had sharp
words for Obama's administration after a closed-door
meeting between U.N. disarmament chief Angela Kane
and the 37 U.N. member states that asked Ban to
investigate the August 21 poison gas attack.
"Who asked Mr. Obama to be the bully of the world?"
Ja'afari said.
Obama was due to leave Washington on Tuesday for a
G20 meeting in Russia. France said foreign ministers of
some of the G20 member states will convene on the
sidelines of the meeting to discuss Syria.
The conflict has divided the Middle East on sectarian
lines, with Shi'ite Iran backing Assad and Washington's
Sunni Arab Gulf allies supporting the mainly Sunni
rebels. It has also revived Cold War-style tensions
between the Western powers and Moscow.
In an interview in Le Figaro, Assad told the French
newspaper: "Everybody will lose control of the situation
when the powder keg blows. There is a risk of a
regional war."
The influential pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC urged U.S.
lawmakers to approve a resolution authorizing strikes to
punish Assad. "This is a critical moment when America
must also send a forceful message of resolve to Iran
and Hezbollah - both of whom have provided direct and
extensive military support to Assad," AIPAC said in a
statement.
The rebels have been struggling to hold ground in recent
months, let alone advance. According to one opposition
report, government forces took the strategic
northwestern town of Ariha on Tuesday, though others
said the battle was not over.
While Obama's wait for Congress to return from its
summer recess seems to rule out Western military
action this week, Israeli forces training in the
Mediterranean with the U.S. Navy set nerves on edge in
Damascus with a missile test.
When Moscow raised the alarm that its forces had
detected the launch of two ballistic "objects" in the
Mediterranean, thoughts of a surprise strike on Syria
pushed oil prices higher.
Clarification came only later when the Israeli Defence
Ministry said that its troops had - at the time of the
Russian alert - fired a missile that is used as a target
for an anti-missile defence system during an exercise
with U.S. forces.