Nato countries 'plan Syria action'

The top US military commander in Europe has said that several Nato countries are working on contingency plans for possible military action to end the two-year civil war in Syria.

The claim came as President Bashar Assad’s regime accused US-backed Syrian rebels of using chemical weapons.

The Obama administration rejected the Assad claim as a sign of desperation by a besieged government intent on drawing attention from its war atrocities – some 70,000 dead, more than a million refugees and 2.5 million people internally displaced.

A US official said there was no evidence that either Assad forces or the opposition had used chemical weapons in an attack in northern Syria.

As the war enters its third year, the US military, State Department officials and the UN high commissioner for refugees delivered a dire assessment of a deteriorating situation in Syria and the sober view that even if Assad leaves, the Middle East nation could slip into civil strife similar to the Balkans in the 1990s.

“The Syrian situation continues to become worse and worse and worse,” Admiral James Stavridis, the commander of US European Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “No end in sight to a vicious civil war.”

He said a number of Nato nations are looking at a variety of military operations to end the deadlock and assist the opposition forces, including using aircraft to impose a no-fly zone, providing military assistance to the rebels and imposing arms embargoes.

As with US and international involvement in Libya in 2011, a resolution from the UN Security Council and agreement among the alliance’s 28 members would be necessary before Nato assumes a military role in Syria, he said.

“We are prepared if called upon to be engaged as we were in Libya,” he said.

His personal opinion is that providing military assistance to the Syrian opposition “would be helpful in breaking the deadlock and bringing down the Assad regime”.

Syria’s state-run news agency said 25 people were killed in a chemical attack on the Khan al-Assad village in northern Aleppo province.

It said 86 people were wounded, some critically, and published pictures of children and others on stretchers in what appeared to be a hospital ward.

Russia, which supports Assad in the civil war, backed the claims of a chemical attack.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the US is looking carefully at all allegations but that the Obama administration is “deeply sceptical” of any claims from Assad’s regime.

The violent, unending war has prompted some in Congress to demand greater action by the Obama administration. But a war-weary American public has been slow to embrace many of the efforts.

In the latest proposal, Senators Bob Casey, a Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Republican, offered a bipartisan measure that would provide non-lethal aid to vetted Syrian opposition groups fighting the Assad regime, such as body armour and communications equipment.

They left open the possibility of arming the rebels at a later date.