France’s government offers a preview Wednesday of what the Obama administration faces next week, as lawmakers debate the wisdom and necessity of a military response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed hundreds.
Shoring up support for a military response, French officials said a punitive military response would help shift the balance in a two-and-half-year old civil war that was tipping in favor of Bashar Assad.
‘If you want a political solution you have to move the situation. If there’s no sanction, Bashar Assad will say ‘that’s fine, I’ll continue what I’m doing,’ France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told France Info radio Wednesday morning, hours ahead of the debate.
As the Obama administration worked to build its own support ahead of the Congress vote, the US and Israel conducted a joint missile test yesterday in the eastern Mediterranean in an apparent signal of military readiness. In the operation, a missile was fired from the sea toward the Israeli coast to test the tracking by the country’s missile defense system.
Shoring up support for a military response, French officials said a punitive military response would help shift the balance in a two-and-half-year old civil war that was tipping in favor of Bashar Assad.
‘If you want a political solution you have to move the situation. If there’s no sanction, Bashar Assad will say ‘that’s fine, I’ll continue what I’m doing,’ France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told France Info radio Wednesday morning, hours ahead of the debate.
As the Obama administration worked to build its own support ahead of the Congress vote, the US and Israel conducted a joint missile test yesterday in the eastern Mediterranean in an apparent signal of military readiness. In the operation, a missile was fired from the sea toward the Israeli coast to test the tracking by the country’s missile defense system.