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WASHINGTON — The Syrian government yesterday said it would let a United Nations team look for evidence of its alleged chemical weapon attack on civilians — but Obama administration officials say it’s too little, too late.
“At this juncture, the belated decision by the regime to grant access to the UN team is too late to be credible,” said a senior administration official, responding to reports by Syria’s state-run media that UN inspectors would be admitted tomorrow.
“There is very little doubt at this point that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime against civilians in this incident,” the official said.
President Obama remained poised to order strikes over the latest report of chemical-weapon atrocities by Bashar al-Assad’s government, with hundreds of civilians reported killed and thousands injured in the Wednesday attack outside Damascus.
A year ago, Obama threatened that Syria would cross a “red line” if it resorted to chemical weapons in its bloody civil war. But the president refrained from taking aggressive action after previous reports of chemical attacks.
This time, four Navy destroyers, armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, have taken positions in the Mediterranean Sea near the Syrian coast.
The evidence of chemical weapons likely would be “significantly corrupted as a result of the regime’s persistent shelling and other intentional actions over the last five days,” said the official.
“We have seen the reports that after five days of refusing to allow the UN investigative team immediate and unimpeded access to the site of a reported August 21 chemical-weapons attacks, the regime may allow access tomorrow,” the official said.
“If the Syrian government had nothing to hide and wanted to prove to the world that it had not used chemical weapons in this incident, it would have ceased its attacks on the area and granted immediate access to the UN five days ago.”
Meanwhile, Obama called French President François Hollande and discussed possible international responses to the violence in Syria, the White House said.