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Syria asks UN to stop US strike

Iran ready to negotiate; 'unconvinced' Russia sends intelligence ship to Mediterranean; Assad warns of regional war

Agencies
Syria has asked the United Nations to prevent "any aggression" against Syria following a call over the weekend by US President Barack Obama for punitive strikes against the Syrian military for last month's chemical weapons attack, reported Reuters.
Washington says more than 1,400 people, many of them children, were killed in the world's worst use of chemical arms since Iraq's Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in 1988.
Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out a "massive and coordinated" chemical attack in Damascus on August 21, according a French intelligence report shown to lawmakers yesterday, a government source said.
On the other hand, Assad warned in an interview published yesterday that a regional war could break out if Syria is attacked, reports CNN. "The Middle East is a powder keg, and the fire is approaching today," he told French newspaper Le Figaro.
Syria has repeatedly denied being behind an August 21 chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of people.
Iran has told the UN it is prepared to find a "peaceful resolution" to the crisis in ally Syria, as the threat of a US strike looms, state media said yesterday.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif relayed the message to Secretary Ban Ki-moon during a phone conversation late Sunday, state broadcaster I RIB said on its website, AFP reported.
Meanwhile, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told the BBC any US military action against Syria would amount to "support for al-Qaeda and its affiliates".
He also said armed groups backed by America - not Syrian troops - had used chemical weapons.
US military action will be put to a vote in Congress, which ends its summer recess on September 9, giving President Bashar al-Assad time to prepare the ground for any assault and try to rally international support against the use of force.
In a letter to UN chief Ban
Ki-moon and President of the Security Council Maria Cristina Perceval, Syrian UN envoy Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari called on "the UN Secretary General to shoulder his responsibilities for preventing any aggression on Syria and pushing forward reaching a political solution to the crisis in Syria", state news agency SANA said yesterday.
He called on the Security Council to "maintain its role as a safety valve to prevent the absurd use of force out of the frame of international legitimacy".
Ja'afari said the United States should "play its role, as a peace sponsor and as a
partner to Russia in the preparation for the international conference on Syria and not as a state that uses force against whoever opposes its policies".
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that tests showed sarin nerve gas was fired on rebel-held areas on August 21.
Ja'afari said Kerry had "adopted old stories fabricated by terrorists" based on fake photos from the Internet.
Meanwhile, Russia is totally unconvinced by evidence presented by the United States and its allies of an alleged chemical attack outside Damascus that the
West says was perpetrated by the Syrian regime, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday.
Russia is sending a reconnaissance ship to the eastern Mediterranean, Interfax news agency reported yesterday, as the LInited States prepares for a possible military strike in Syria, AFP reported.
The reconnaissance ship left Russia's naval base in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol late on Sunday on a mission "to gather current information in the area of the escalating conflict", the Interfax report quoted an unidentified military source as saying.