Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump cancels Peru trip to stay at helm on Syria
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has canceled a planned trip to the Summit of the Americas in Peru, the White House announced Tuesday, citing a need to remain in the United States to monitor the U.S. response to a suspected chemical attack in Syria.
Vice President Mike Pence will travel to the gathering instead, according to a statement by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The president will remain in the United States to oversee the American response to Syria and to monitor developments around the world,” Sanders said Tuesday.
Trump vowed Monday that the United States would take swift action in retaliation for the suspected chemical weapons attack Saturday on civilians in Syria, which has been blamed for the deaths of at least 49 people in the opposition-held town of Douma outside the Syrian capital, Damascus.
“It was an atrocious attack. It was horrible,” Trump said at the start of a Cabinet meeting that was one of several White House gatherings Monday where possible military action was discussed.
Options include the sort of largely symbolic airstrike Trump ordered a year ago in response to a similar chemical attack — using sarin gas
— blamed on Syrian President Bashar Assad, or a wider and riskier assault. Trump oversaw the last response from his Mara-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
On Tuesday, Trump administration officials consulted with global allies on a possible joint military response.
Trump spoke with other world leaders, and U.S. officials said the United States, France and Britain were in extensive consultations about launching a military strike as early as the end of this week. None of the three countries’ leaders had made a firm decision, according to the officials, who were not authorized to discuss military planning by name.
A joint military operation, possibly with France rather than the United States in the lead, could send a message of international unity about enforcing the prohibitions on chemical weapons and counter Syria’s political and military support from Russia and Iran.
President Emmanuel Macron said France, the United States and Britain will decide how to respond in the coming days. He called for a “strong and joint response” to the attack, in which the Syrian government denies responsibility.
The French president does not need parliamentary permission to launch a military operation. France is already involved in the U.S.-led coalition created in 2014 to fight the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq. Multiple Islamic State attacks have targeted French soil, including one last month.
Trump suggested Monday that he had little doubt that Syrian government forces were to blame for what he said was a chemical attack, but neither he nor other administration officials have produced hard evidence.
Officials suggested such evidence was lacking, or at least not yet at hand. This is in contrast to the incident a year ago in which U.S. intelligence agencies had video and other evidence of certain aspects of the actual attack.
One official said the U.S., France and Britain were considering military options that would be more extensive than the cruise missile strike on an airfield last April. That strike did not appear to have had the desired effect of deterring Assad from further use of chemical agents. So the three countries are discussing a range of options, including preventing Assad from conducting future attacks by striking military capabilities involved in carrying out such attack, the official said.
Trump spoke by phone with British Prime Minister Theresa May. A British government statement said the two agreed the attack in Syria was “utterly reprehensible” and that the international community must respond “to uphold the worldwide prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.”
The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, told reporters that he and Trump “see eye to eye” on the Syria problem.
“We cannot tolerate … a war criminal,” said the emir, who was visiting Trump at the White House on Tuesday. He added, “This matter should end immediately.”
Qatar hosts the United States’ main air operations center for the Middle East, which would coordinate any American air attack in Syria.
Amid the tough talk from the White House, the U.S. military appeared to be in position to carry out any attack order. A Navy destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, got underway in the eastern Mediterranean on Monday after completing a port call in Cyprus. The guided missile destroyer is armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, the weapon of choice in the U.S.’ strike a year ago on a Syrian airfield in retaliation for the sarin attack.
Also, the Navy said the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and its strike group will depart Norfolk, Va., today for a regularly scheduled deployment to Europe. The Navy does not currently have a carrier in the Persian Gulf.
REQUEST FOR FACTS
A watchdog agency, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, announced Tuesday that it will “shortly” send a fact-finding mission to Douma, after receiving a request from the Syrian government and its Russian backers to investigate the allegations.
It was not immediately clear if that visit would delay or avert U.S. or allied military action.
The Russian military, which has troops in Syria, said Monday that its officers had visited the site of the alleged attack and found no evidence to back up reports of poison gas being used.
Adding to the tensions, Iran, a strong ally of Assad, threatened to respond to an airstrike Monday on a Syrian military base that the Syrian government, Russia and Iran blamed on Israel.
Seven Iranians were among the estimated 14 people killed in the missile strike, and a senior Iranian official visiting Damascus said the attack “will not remain unanswered.” Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to Iran’s supreme leader, spoke upon arrival in the Syrian capital on Tuesday.
The Syrian air base was struck by missiles a little more than 24 hours after the alleged chemical attack. Israel does not typically comment on its operations in Syria, and it is unclear whether the missile attack was linked to the alleged use of chemical weapons.
Iran is one of Assad’s strongest backers and has sent thousands of troops and allied militiamen to support his forces.
Syrian government forces were on high alert and taking precautionary measures Tuesday at military positions across the country amid fears of a U.S. strike in the aftermath of the attack near Damascus.
At the United Nations, meanwhile, Russia vetoed a U.S.-drafted resolution that would have condemned the suspected gas attack and established a new body to determine responsibility for Syrian chemical weapons attacks. The vote Tuesday in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, with Bolivia joining Russia in voting “no” and China abstaining.
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Russia of repeatedly shielding Assad instead of working for Security Council unity.
She said the United States “went the extra mile” to get Russian support for the resolution to ensure that a new investigative body would be impartial, independent and professional — things she said would not be guaranteed by a rival Russian resolution.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the United States of wanting the resolution to fail “to justify the use of force against Syria.”
He said the resolution was trying to recreate the old expert body, whose extension Moscow blocked in November. He called that body “a puppet in the hands of anti-Damascus forces.”
Chemical weapons attacks have killed hundreds of people since the start of Syria’s conflict, with the U.N. blaming four attacks on the Syrian government and a fifth on the Islamic State militant group.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in a statement, said its technical secretariat has asked the Syrian government to make the necessary arrangements for the deployment of a fact-finding mission. The group is the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, which has been signed by 192 member states.
Syria became a member in 2013 as part of a deal brokered by the U.S. and Russia after a chemical attack in eastern Ghouta killed hundreds of people. That attack was widely blamed on government forces, who denied responsibility.
Thousands of opposition fighters, along with tens of thousands of civilians, are still in Douma. The rebels agreed to surrender the town to government forces after the suspected gas attack, and have been evacuating in batches to rebel-held areas in the north. Russian military police have since entered parts of the town.
Trump’s three-day trip to Latin America, set to begin Friday, would have been Trump’s first visit there since taking office. After traveling to Peru for the gathering of Western hemisphere heads of state, Trump planned to go to Colombia to meet with President Juan Manuel Santos.
Information for this article was contributed by John Wagner, Philip Rucker and Anne Gearan of The Washington Post and by Robert Burns, Zeke Miller, Matthew Lee, Jill Colvin, Ken Thomas, Catherine Lucey, Josh Lederman, Edith M. Lederer, Jonathan Lemire, Angela Charlton, Bassem Mroue, Zeina Karam, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Nasser Karimi and Geir Moulson of The Associated Press.