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Obama warns of cost of US action in Syria
President Obama's foreign policy team is considering a range of options to respond to a Syrian regime chemical attack if it is proven.
Source AAP
US President Barack Obama is urging caution over costly and difficult foreign interventions as calls mount for military action against alleged chemical warfare in Syria.
In an interview with CNN broadcast on Friday, Obama said allegations of a new chemical weapons attack by government forces on Syrian civilians were of "grave concern".
But he also pointed out obstacles to US military action, a year after warning that the use of chemical arms in the vicious Syrian conflict would cross a US "red line".
He said Syrian opposition allegations that hundreds of people had been killed in a gas attack near Damascus this week were more serious than previous charges against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Obama said US authorities were gathering information about the attack, which produced horrifying footage of dead children and victims gasping for air.
"What we've seen indicates clearly this is a big event, of grave concern," Obama said.
The president introduced a note of scepticism, however, to calls from critics like Republican Senator John McCain for US military strikes.
"I am sympathetic to Senator McCain's passion for helping people work through what is an extraordinarily difficult and heart-breaking situation," he said.
But Obama said Americans expect him to protect their long-term national security interests.
"Sometimes what we've seen is folks will call for immediate action, jumping into stuff that does not turn out well, gets us mired in very difficult situations," Obama said.
He warned that America could get "drawn into very expensive, difficult, costly interventions that actually breed more resentment in the region," he said.
The president also said there were questions whether the United States would infringe international law if it attacked another country without a United Nations Security Council mandate.
And, after ending the Iraq war and as he brings troops home from Afghanistan, Obama noted the cost in US lives and financial resources of foreign military action.
"I'm reminded that there are costs and we have to take those into account as we try to work within an international framework to do everything we can to see Assad ousted," Obama said.
A senior US official told AFP Obama's foreign policy team was considering a range of options to respond to the attack if it is proven to be the work of Syrian forces.
But the official said there were no discussions about setting up a no fly zone over Syria or on deploying ground forces.
That comment appeared to theoretically leave open the possibility of cruise missile strikes against Syrian military targets or munitions and artillery installations, or attacks from US planes launched from outside Syria.
Senior national security officials spent three-and-a-half hours at the White House on Thursday to discuss options for Obama.
Bernadette Meehan, a National Security Council spokeswoman, said Obama would wait until the facts of the attack were clear before acting.
"We are going to act very deliberately so that we're making decisions consistent with our national interest as well as our assessment of what can advance our objectives in Syria," she said.
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