Summary Hollande said Tuesday France would increase its military support to Syrian opposition.
PARIS (Reuters) - President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday that France stood ready to punish the perpetrators of a chemical attack in Damascus last week and would increase its military support to the Syrian opposition.
"France is ready to punish those who took the decision to gas the innocent," Hollande told an annual meeting in Paris of dozens of French ambassadors posted around the world.
Hollande said it seemed certain that forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad were behind the chemical attack - which is believed to have killed hundreds of civilians - and said it was the outside world s responsibility to respond.
Meanwhile, Syria s foreign minister said Tuesday his country would defend itself using "all means available" in case of a U.S. strike, denying his government was behind an alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus and challenging Washington to present proof backing up its accusations.
Walid al-Moallem spoke at a press conference in Damascus as condemnation of President Bashar Assad s grew over last week s purported attack with poison gas, which activists say killed hundreds of people.
The Arab League threw its weight behind calls for punitive action, blaming the Syrian government for the attack and calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
The announcement by the 22-member body, which is dominated by Gulf powerhouses Saudi Arabia and Qatar, provides indirect Arab cover for any potential military attack by Western powers.
The United Nations, meanwhile, said that its team of chemical weapons experts in Syria has delayed a second trip to investigate the alleged attack near Damascus by one day for security reasons.
Al-Moallem, speaking at a press conference in Damascus, likened U.S. allegations that President Bashar Assad s regime was behind the attack to false American charges that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of that country.
"They have a history of lies Iraq," he said.
Al-Moallem spoke a day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said there was "undeniable" evidence of a large-scale chemical attack likely launched by Assad s regime.
Kerry s comments and tough language Monday laid out the clearest argument yet for U.S. military action in Syria, which, if President Barack Obama decides to order it, would most likely involve sea-launched cruise missile attacks on Syrian military targets.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday that U.S. forces are now ready to act on any such order.
In an interview with BBC television during a visit to the southeast Asian nation of Brunei, he said the U.S. Navy has four destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea positioned within range of targets inside Syria. U.S. warplanes are also in the region, he said.
Support for some sort of international military response is likely to grow if it is confirmed that Assad s regime was responsible for the Aug. 21 attack that activists say killed hundreds of people. The group Doctors Without Borders put the death toll at 355.
