ISTANBUL
US's military strike plans in Syria focus on the security of its allies rather than the bloodshed in the war-torn country, said an official from the Syrian National Coalition (SNC).
"US President Obama has given the Syrian regime an opportunity to re-position its military forces. The bloodshed in Syria does not matter to him," SNC’s Turkey representative Khalid Khoja told the AA correspondent in Istanbul.
President Barack Obama announced on Saturday that he would wait for a vote in the US Congress before deciding whether the US should take military action against Bashar al-Assad's government for last week's poisonous gas attack near capital Damascus that killed at least 1,429 people according to US intelligence reports.
"Obama's announcement shows that a possible military intervention in Syria would not be a meaningful response to 130,000 martyrs massacred by the Assad regime, 7 million displaced citizens or nearly 200,000 people missing or held in the regime's jails."
Khoja said the main rationale behind military action was the fact that the Syrian regime used long-range missiles to fire chemical agents. "This poses a threat to US allies in the region, particularly Israel. The US cares not about Syrians' blood, but about Israel’s security," he said.
- US-Russia agreement 'likely'
Khoja said Obama's decision to bring the issue of intervention to the Congress meant the US would wait for 9 more days before going ahead with the plan, given the Congress’s reconvention on September 9.
That would give Assad enough time to make adjustments to the positions of his military posts and allow him to use civilians as shield, Khoja said.
Russia's last-minute diplomacy was a success, Khoja said, and might lead to an agreement between the US and Russia on preserving the Assad regime in return for assurances that it would not use chemical weapons as a threat.
Obama did not plan to take down the government in Syria, but wanted to punish it, Khoja asserted.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
