Britain is not seeking any “escalation” of the conflict in Syria, said Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, after its involvement in air strikes over the weekend provoked anger from the opposition Labour party.
Theresa May is facing a considerable backlash for authorising military action in Syria without the consent of parliament and Mr Johnson sought to frame the mission as a strictly limited strike to prevent the use of chemical weapons.
“This was not about regime change,” he told the BBC, admitting the intervention would not change the course of the Syrian conflict. “One of the greatest achievements of the modern world that we banned chemical weapons, almost a century ago . . . finally the world has said enough is enough.”
Mrs May will explain to parliament on Monday why she joined the US-led effort without first asking MPs and with public support for military action in Syria only at 22 per cent, according to a recent YouGov poll.
In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition Labour leader, said that Mrs May could have “quite easily” recalled parliament to vote or delayed the action until MPs returned this week. He called for her to face a retrospective vote on the strikes.
He also said there should be a new War Powers Act - as promised but never delivered by the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown - to guarantee MPs a vote on any future military action.
But David Lidington, Cabinet Office secretary, played down the chances of a vote in an interview on Sunday.
Mr Corbyn repeated his insistence that a solution in Syria could be achieved through the United Nations, despite the Russian veto on the security council.
Asked what he thought western powers should be doing, he said to the BBC that they should “go back to the United Nations and promote a resolution and work night and day with Russia and the US so we do get a political process in Syria as well as, of course, the removal of chemical weapons.”
He cited how chemical weapons had been destroyed after western powers threatened to intervene against President Assad in 2013. “The wider context has to be the promotion of a political conflict and a ceasefire . . . it can be done, it’s hard work and it takes patience.”
Mr Corbyn said 12 separate countries were now embroiled in the war in Syria and the death toll had passed 400,000. Asked if he would support military action if the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons identified the Assad regime as the culprits, he replied: “I would then say confront Assad with that evidence, confront any other group that may be fingered, and then say we must now come in and destroy those weapons.”
Mr Johnson meanwhile claimed that people around the world would welcome the fact that Western countries had stood up for the ban on chemical weapons.
But he said it was important to understand the limits of what the US, France and UK were hoping to achieve.
“This is not going to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria, one can hope that it encourages the Russians to get Assad to the negotiating table,” he said. “That is, as it were, an extra, the primary purpose is to say no to the use of barbaric chemical weapons.”
The foreign secretary said attempts had been made to “communicate clearly” those intentions in advance to Moscow, Tehran and Damascus in order to “de-conflict” the situation as far as possible. He refused to give more operational details about those contacts.
The “taboo” on the use of chemical weapons had eroded over the past seven years and it was important to “re-erect that boundary in human psychology,” he said. “Our particular desire to reinforce this prohibition was what this was about.”
Mr Johnson dodged the question of whether there would be a vote on Monday, suggesting it would be a “matter for the usual channels” including the Speaker: “Let’s see what the opposition propose,” he said.
Britain’s involvement in Friday’s strikes involved four RAF Tornado jets based in Cyprus launching cruise missile strikes on Syria.
Mrs May said on Saturday that the military strikes were justified not just in terms of deterring the Assad regime from further use of chemical weapons but also as a signal to Russia that its alleged use of nerve agents in Salisbury broke all international norms. Mr Johnson said it was “extraordinary” that anyone doubted the likelihood that the attack on the Skripals was not a Russian state-sanctioned action.
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