Nato’s secretary general said yesterday he had seen evidence convincing him Syrian authorities were behind a deadly chemical weapons attack and said it would send a “dangerous signal to dictators” if the world did not respond firmly.

However, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said it was up to individual Nato countries to decide how they would respond to the attack and he did not envisage any Nato role beyond existing plans to defend Nato member Turkey, which borders Syria.

“I have been presented with concrete information and, without going into details, I can tell you that personally I am convinced, not only that a chemical attack has taken place... but I am also convinced that the Syrian regime is responsible,” Rasmussen told a news conference.

Russian MPs want to fly to Washington to sway Syria vote

US President Barack Obama has said he will seek congressional authorisation for punitive action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after what Washington said was a sarin gas attack on August 21 that killed more than 1,400 people.

Rasmussen said there was “agreement that we need a firm international response in order to avoid that chemical attacks take place in the future.

“It would send, I would say, a dangerous signal to dictators all over the world if we stand idly by and don’t react.”

But Rasmussen said he saw no further role for Nato in the Syria crisis, beyond defending Turkey.

“If a response to what has happened in Syria were to be a military operation, I’d envisage a very short, measured, targeted operation, and you don’t need the Nato command and control system to conduct such a short, measured, tailored, military operation,” he said.

Meanwhile Russian lawmakers want to travel to Washington to urge the US Congress not to back President Barack Obama’s plan for military strikes on Syria, the speaker of the upper house of Parliament told President Vladimir Putin yesterday.

Dismissing US accusations that the Syrian government had killed hundreds of its own people with poison gas as nothing but “talk”, senior legislator Valentina Matviyenko said both chambers were ready to send delegations.

Russia is one of the main allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has already blocked several Western-led resolutions in the UN Security Council to sanction him over his crackdown on a now two-and-a-half-year-old uprising.

“I think if we manage to establish a dialogue with our partners in the US Congress, to exchange arguments, we could possibly better understand each other,” Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, told Putin at his residence near Moscow.

“We hope that the US Congress will occupy a balanced position in the end and without strong arguments in place... will not support the proposal on use of force in Syria,” Matviyenko added.

Obama said on Friday he would seek Congressional authorisation for punitive action against Assad after what Washington said was a sarin gas attack that killed more than 1,400 people.

Putin rejected the US assertions hours later, saying on Saturday he was convinced the August 21 attack was staged by Assad’s opponents to provoke military intervention.

It was uncertain what sort of reception a Russian delegation would receive in the United States. Both countries passed legislation last year to punish the other for alleged human rights violations. Moscow has also defied Washington by granting temporary asylum to former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.

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