{"id":14031,"date":"2018-09-06T06:26:29","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T06:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14031"},"modified":"2018-09-06T06:26:29","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T06:26:29","slug":"us-will-respond-swiftly-if-assad-uses-chemical-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14031","title":{"rendered":"US will \u2018respond swiftly\u2019 if Assad uses chemical weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nWASHINGTON: The US warned Syria Tuesday it will respond \u201cswiftly and appropriately\u201d if it uses chemical weapons against its people.<\/p>\n

\nThe warning came amid signs that Syrian President Bashar Assad was preparing an offensive in Idlib province that the UN has said poses the threat of a humanitarian disaster.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cLet us be clear, it remains our firm stance that if President Bashar Assad chooses to again use chemical weapons, the United States and its allies will respond swiftly and appropriately,\u201d White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\nThe White House was \u201cclosely monitoring the situation in Idlib province, Syria, where millions of innocent civilians are under threat of an imminent Assad regime attack, backed by Russia and Iran,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cPresident Donald J. Trump has warned that such an attack would be a reckless escalation of an already tragic conflict and would risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of people,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\nSeparately, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said there was \u201czero intelligence\u201d of chemical weapons capabilities possessed by groups opposing Assad in Idlib,\u00a0 adding that the facts did not back Russian assertions.<\/p>\n

\nIn the past few days, Russian officials, cited by Russian media, have said there was a plan by \u201cmilitants\u201d to stage a false chemical weapons attack in Idlib province to frame Assad.\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe have zero intelligence that shows the opposition has any chemical capability,\u201d Mattis told reporters traveling with him to the Indian capital of New Delhi.<\/p>\n

\nRussia’s Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said he had told US officials that Moscow was concerned over signs the US was preparing new strikes on Syria and warned against \u201cgroundless and illegal aggression against Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe have made very clear that by putting out innuendo that somehow any chemical weapon use coming up in the future could be ascribed to the opposition, well, we want to see the data,\u201d Mattis said. \u201cWe cannot see anything that indicates the opposition has that capability.\u201d He said instead there was a history of Assad’s regime using such weapons.<\/p>\n

\nUS President Donald Trump has twice ordered US-led strikes against targets in Syria in response to what Washington called the Assad regime\u2019s use of chemical weapons against civilians.<\/p>\n

\nAsked if he saw indications of the Syrian regime preparing to use chemical weapons in Idlib, Mattis said, \u201cI think the best answer to that is, we are very alert.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nSputnik, a Russian state-owned news outlet, said recently the White Helmets rescue service had delivered a large shipment of toxic substances to \u201clocal armed militant groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe Pentagon said the Russian government was using a \u201cconcentrated disinformation campaign\u201d to discredit the US and its allies.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThat Russia is seeking to plant false lies about chemical weapons use suggests that Moscow is seeking to deflect from its own culpability when these heinous weapons are used,\u201d Commander Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON: The US warned Syria Tuesday it will respond \u201cswiftly and appropriately\u201d if it uses chemical weapons against its people. The warning came amid signs that Syrian President Bashar Assad was preparing an offensive in Idlib province that the UN has said poses the threat of a humanitarian disaster. \u201cLet us be clear, it remains…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":14032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}