As President Obama weighs options for sanctioning Syria over alleged chemical weapons use, France, which defiantly opposed U.S. intervention in Iraq a decade ago, has emerged as Washington's staunchest supporter for punitive air strikes, reports the Los Angeles Times.
After the British Parliament on Thursday rejected Prime Minister David Cameron's proposal to authorize military action against Syria, French President Francois Hollande said Friday that the British decision wouldn't weaken his government's commitment to sanction the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"The chemical massacre of Damascus cannot and must not remain unpunished," Hollande said in an interview with the French daily Le Monde. "There are few countries with the capacities to inflict sanctions with the appropriate means ... France is among those. It is ready."
Hollande brushed off the 285-272 vote in Britain's House of Commons against the measure authorizing military intervention in Syria as its right.
"Every country is sovereign in deciding whether or not to participate in an operation," Hollande told the newspaper.
France, along with Germany, was one of the most vocal opponents of military action in Iraq in pursuit of U.S. claims that President Saddam Hussein had hidden caches of weapons of mass destruction. France's then-Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin drew raucous applause at the United Nations in his Feb. 14, 2003, speech against the impending U.S.-led invasion that occurred weeks later.
Read more of this report from the Los Angeles Times.