US President Barack Obama took his case for a punitive strike on Syria to Europe yesterday, insisting ahead of the G20 meeting in Russia that the world “had to act” against the Assad regime to maintain the credibility of global ban on chemical weapons.
However, the chances of a civil exchange over Mr Obama’s determination to strike Syria over its alleged gas attack on civilians last month diminished after his G20 host, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, accused the US of lying about the Syrian rebels.
“They are sanctioning aggression, because anything that is beyond the UN Security Council framework except self-defence is aggression,” Mr Putin said on the eve of the summit gathering in St Petersburg.