PRAGUE — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday warned President Bashar al-Assad of Syria not to use chemical weapons and said that the United States was prepared to act if he ignored the warning.
David W Cerny/Reuters
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a news conference in Prague on Monday.
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
Syrian civilians fled from the village of Ras al-Ayn on Monday, after Syrian jets bombed the village.
“This is a red line for the United States,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I am 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 we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”
There have been signs in recent days of heightened activity at some of Syria’s chemical weapons sites, according to American and Israeli officials familiar with intelligence reports. Mrs. Clinton did not confirm the intelligence reports or say what sort of activity was occurring.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry, in a swift response, said the government “would not use chemical weapons, if it had them, against its own people under any circumstances.” The statement was reported on Syrian state television and on the Lebanese channel LBC.
Mrs. Clinton, who made her comments after meeting with Karel Schwarzenberg, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, indicated that the two sides had discussed the situation in Syria, including the potential chemical weapons threat.
Mr. Schwarzenberg described the situation in Syria as “rather chaotic” and “highly dangerous.” He said that Czech troops who specialize in the detection of chemical weapons and decontamination were in Jordan training with forces there.
An American task force has been deployed to Jordan and has been helping the Jordanians deal with the escalating humanitarian crisis, including an exodus of more than 200,000 refugees from Syria to Jordan. The force is also planning how to respond, if necessary, to a chemical weapons threat.
Although Mrs. Clinton’s reference to a “red line” echoed a warning issued by President Obama in August, it was the most explicit warning from a ranking American official since reports of renewed chemical weapons activity began to surface in recent days.
Mrs. Clinton stopped in Prague on her way to Brussels for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. A major topic of the NATO meeting is a Turkish request that the alliance deploy Patriot antimissile batteries in Turkey. The Turkish government is concerned about Syria’s ballistic missiles, which could carry chemical weapons, and it wants NATO to guard as many as 10 sites inside Turkey.
What exactly is happening at Syria’s chemical sites is unclear. One American official said Sunday that “the activity we are seeing suggests some potential chemical weapon preparation,” which goes beyond the mere movement of stockpiles among Syria’s several dozen known sites. But the official declined to offer more specifics.
Over the weekend, the activity in Syria prompted a series of urgent consultations among the Western nations, which have long been developing contingency plans to neutralize the chemical weapons, a task that the Pentagon estimates would require more than 75,000 troops. But there were no signs that any American action was imminent.
So far, Mr. Obama has been very cautious about intervening in Syria, declining to arm the opposition groups directly.
Clinton Warns Syria Against Using Chemical Weapons
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Clinton Warns Syria Against Using Chemical Weapons
