'Panicked' Phone Calls Prove Syria Behind Gas Attack
The report will set out the timeline of how the Syrian regime used chemical weapons in last week's alleged nerve agent attack outside Damascus.
According to Foreign Policy, the evidence includes "panicked" phone calls between Syria's foreign ministry and the leader of a chemical weapons unit, raising the possibility that a rogue officer could have been responsible for the attack.
Key Syria ally Russia has starting pulling its citizens out of the country ahead of a Western air assault that many now see as inevitable. As scores of Russians were flown out of the country, the country's foreign minister warned that intervention "will lead to the long-term destabilization of the situation in the country and the region," the APreports.
Deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin had harsher words: "The West behaves towards the Islamic world like a monkey with a grenade."
Military action could happen as soon as tomorrow, when British Prime Minister David Cameron calls an emergency meeting of Parliament for lawmakers to vote on British involvement, reports the AP. France and Turkey are also expected to contribute to military action against Syria, but the Arab League has refused to support intervention.
US officials insist that the strikes being considered are to "deter and degrade" Syria's ability to launch chemical attacks but not to bring about regime change. But some analysts warn that if the assault ends up being largely symbolic, it will hand Assad a propaganda victory by allowing him to claim that he faced down the world's only superpower, the New York Times notes.
While the US says it has proof of a chemical attack, United Nations investigators are still at work. UN chemical weapons experts were seen leaving a Damascus hotel today and anti-regime activists say they were headed for one of the areas affected by last week's alleged attack. A UN spokeswoman says the team might need more than two weeks to finish its work.
