WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama is awaiting a “definitive judgment” on whether the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against rebel fighters before taking action, the White House said on Friday. The call for action against the Syrian regime, however, grew louder with Syrian opposition urging the UN Security Council to act immediately, possibly even by imposing a no-fly zone and British Prime Minister David Cameron calling the use of chemical weapons a red line. “It is extremely serious: This is a war crime ... We need to go on gathering this evidence and also to send a very clear warning to the Syrian regime about these appalling actions,” Cameron said. The United States said on Thursday for the first time that it believed Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's regime had likely used chemical weapons against opposition forces, though cautioned spy agencies were not 100 percent sure. “We are working to establish credible and corroborated facts to build on this intelligence assessment in order to establish a definitive judgment as to whether or not the president's red line has been crossed,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. The spokesman said those facts would “inform our decision-making about next steps,” adding that “all options remain on the table.” “The president wants the facts. And I'm not going to set a timeline, because the facts need to be what drives this investigation – not a deadline,” Carney said. “The situation in Syria is and has been grave. The Assad regime has the blood of its own people on its hands.” The spokesman reiterated that Washington backed a United Nations investigation into the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Syria asked for a UN probe but has since refused to let a UN team waiting in the region into the country. The European Union Friday reiterated a request to Damascus to enable a UN chemical weapons probe in Syria. “We hope there will be a United Nations investigation inside Syria to hopefully shed some light on what has really happened,” a spokesman for the EU's top diplomat Catherine Ashton said after being queried over the EU stand. “The bottom line is this would of course be clearly unacceptable” if proven, said spokesman Michael Mann. Asked if Brussels remained unconvinced over the allegations of chemical weapons use, he added: “We are still wanting more monitoring to be done ... We don't want to be definitive on this until we have some definitive evidence.” “The most important thing is for the United Nations to carry out an investigation inside the country.” Turkey said that any use of chemical weapons by Assad would “take the crisis to another level”, but remained cautious about any foreign military intervention in the conflict on its border. – Agencies
