The Guardian with, perhaps,
some welcome news, as they report that MP protests in London have yet to be quelled and likely (they say) put off any U.S. assault on Syria until about Tuesday. Of course, who cares about U.S. Congress.
British prime minister David Cameron
conceded that MPs would be given a second vote to approve military
action to defuse a parliamentary revolt, ahead of a Commons debate on Syria
on Thursday. UK sources insisted that the US, which had planned to
launch the strikes by the weekend, had delayed, handing Cameron a
lifeline, and revived a back-up plan to delay the strikes until Tuesday
when Barack Obama is due to set out for the G20 summit in Russia.
In
an effort to build support for punitive strikes, the US and UK will on
Thursday publish a joint summary of the intelligence which they say
points towards the Assad regime's responsibility for the poison gas
attack of 21 August in Ghouta, eastern Damascus, that killed over 1,000
people.
In a reflection of the different political pressures
pulling the transatlantic allies in different directions, Downing Street
undertook to return to the security council in a renewed effort to
secure a UN mandate for military action after Russia blocked a British
resolution at an informal meeting in New York. But the US state
department meanwhile insisted it saw "no avenue forward" at the UN for
finding an international consensus for armed action, because of Russian
support for Bashar al-Assad's regime.
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