Sound The Trumpet : U.k. Prepping Warships As West Eyes Strike on Syria in Wake of Suspected Chemical Attack

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“U.k. Prepping Warships As West Eyes Strike on Syria in Wake of Suspected Chemical Attack”
by National Post
August 26th, 2013

Britain is planning to join forces with America and launch military action against Syria within days in response to the gas attack believed to have been carried out by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against his own people.

British Royal Navy vessels are being readied to take part in a possible series of cruise missile strikes, alongside the United States, as military commanders finalize a list of potential targets.

Government sources said talks between Prime Minister David Cameron and international leaders, including Barack Obama, would continue but that any military action that was agreed could begin within the next week.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird joined other western leaders in applying more pressure on Syria on Sunday, with a call for Syrian authorities to allow the United Nations immediate and unfettered access to the site of last week’s alleged chemical attack.

Officials in Baird’s office said he had separate phone conversations on Sunday with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the Foreign Minister of the French Republic, Laurent Fabius. He spoke with British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Friday.

The ministers “shared their outrage” about recent events in Syria, especially the purported use of chemical weapons, said an foreign affairs official in an email.

As military preparations gathered pace, Hague warned that the world could not stand by and allow the Assad regime to use chemical weapons against the Syrian people “with impunity.”

Britain, the U.S. and their allies must show Mr. Assad that to perpetrate such an atrocity “is to cross a line and that the world will respond when that line is crossed,” he said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper also was pulling the diplomatic levers over the weekend, discussing the situation in Syria by phone on Saturday in separate conversations with British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande.

British forces now look likely to be drawn into an intervention in the Syrian crisis after months of deliberation and international disagreement over how to respond to the long and bloody civil war.

The possibility of such intervention will provoke demands for Britain’s Parliament to be recalled this week.

The escalation comes as a direct response to what the government is now convinced was a gas attack perpetrated by Syrian forces on a civilian district of Damascus last Wednesday.

The Assad regime has been under mounting pressure to allow United Nations inspectors on to the site to establish who was to blame for the atrocity. One international agency said it had counted at least 355 people dead and 3,600 injured following the attack, while reports suggested the true death toll could be as high as 1,300.

Syrian state media accused rebel forces of using chemical agents, saying some government soldiers had suffocated as a result during fighting.

After days of delay, the Syrian government finally offered Sunday to allow a team of UN inspectors access to the area. However, Mr. Hague suggested that this offer of access five days after the attack had come too late.

Baird said the delay in allowing inspectors, along with the bombardment of the affected areas, has likely already impaired the UN’s ability to assign responsibility in the attacks.

Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13