Prague - US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday issued a "strong
warning" to the regime of Bashar Assad over the potential use of chemical
weapons against the Syrian people.
"This is a
red line for the United States," Clinton said after meeting Czech Foreign
Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.
"Once again
we issue a very strong warning to the Assad regime that their behaviour is
reprehensible. Their actions against their own people have been tragic,"
she added.
"I'm not
going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible
evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against
their own people, but suffice it to say that we're certainly planning to take
action if that eventuality were to occur," the top US diplomat stressed.
"There is no
doubt that there is a line between the horrors that they [the Assad regime]
have already inflicted on the Syrian people and moving to what would be an
internationally condemned step of utilising chemical weapons," Clinton
stressed, without providing further details on the nature of the planned
action.
The warning came
as the New York Times reported on Monday that the Americans and Europeans had
sent warnings via intermediaries to the Syrian regime after detecting movement
of chemical weapons by the Syrian military in recent days.
41 000 dead
"The activity
we are seeing suggests some potential chemical weapon preparation," one US
official told the daily, which added that the activity over the weekend has set
off a flurry of emergency communications among the Western allies.
Nato is preparing
to meet on Tuesday for two days of talks, with the brutal conflict in Syria set
to top the agenda.
On Sunday, a
senior US State Department official told reporters travelling with Clinton that
Washington was "hopeful that Nato will be in a position to respond positively
and agree to help Turkey bolster its air defences" by approving Ankara's
request to deploy Patriot missiles on the border with Syria.
"If Nato
takes a positive decision to do it... I think it would still probably be at
least a matter of weeks," the official said, asking to remain anonymous,
as Clinton arrived in the Czech Republic on the first stop of a five-day Europe
trip.
The British-based
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 41 000 people, including
thousands of infants, children and women, have perished since the uprising
against Assad's regime erupted in March 2011.
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