The G20 summit, held in St Petersburg in Russia on September 5th-6th, revealed bitter divisions over a possible military action against the Syrian regime.
Herman van Rompuy, president of the European Council, said at the start of the summit that there is “no military solution to the Syrian conflict”.
The US has accused Bashar al-Assad’s regime of killing 1,429 people, including 426 children, in a poison-gas attack in eastern suburbs of Damascus on August 21st.
The Obama administration rightly insists that there has to be a punitive strike against Syria, because the global ban on chemical weapons must be enforced.
The US Congress is expected to vote next week whether to authorise a limited in scope strike against Syria. It is expected that a resolution, which rules out the deployment of US combat troops, would pass in the Senate. But the Obama administration could lose the vote in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
John Boehner, Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, and Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader, both publicly said they would back President Obama’s request to authorise a military strike. The outcome of the vote, however, is uncertain, because there is a strong opposition among rank-and-file members of Congress, from both parties, who don’t want the US to be involved in a new open-ended conflict in the Middle East.
Most Americans also seem to be opposing a military intervention as they remember US inept involvements in Afghanistan, and particularly in Iraq, which have cost billions of dollars and thousands of soldiers have lost their lives.
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President and a long-time ally of Mr Assad, said that only the United Nations Security Council can sanction the use of armed forces. He also said that an alleged chemical weapons attack was a provocation by militants to encourage an outside military intervention.
China, Russia’s Security Council ally, urges all sides of the conflict to stick to a political solution. Germany and Italy want the Syrian conflict to be resolved through the United Nations. Both countries will not participate in any military actions.
Only the US, France and Turkey are willing to punish the Assad regime at present. David Cameron, British Prime Minister, strongly supports Mr Obama’s tough stance on Syria, but Britain will not participate, because the House of Commons has not passed a motion authorising the use of military forces by 285 votes to 272.
photo: Mikhail Kamarov / flickr.com / CC BY 2.0
