Press. Voanews.
British Prime
Minister Theresa May invoked the recent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei
Skripal and his daughter in defending her decision to order British warplanes
to take part in U.S.-led strikes against Syria without first seeking
parliamentary approval.
She told a
packed House of Commons that it was in the “national interest” to prevent
future chemical attacks “within Syria, on the streets of the U.K. or
elsewhere.” And she dismissed critics’ arguments that she was obeying U.S.
instructions. “We have not done this action because President Trump asked us,”
she said. “We have done this because it was the right thing to do.”
She added, “This
was not about intervening in a civil war, nor about regime change.” The aim,
May said, was to degrade Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile with “limited,
targeted and effective strikes” while guarding against triggering an escalation
in the conflict and avoiding civilian casualties.
Ready for cyber attack
Her statement
came as British officials claimed that there had been a 20-fold jump in
disinformation being spread by Kremlin-linked social media accounts since
Saturday’s U.S.-led airstrikes on facilities Washington said were part of a
Syrian government chemical weapons program.
Foreign
Secretary Boris Johnson said Britain’s security agencies were prepared for a
full-scale cyber attack targeting critical national infrastructure by Russia.
He told the BBC that social media dirty tricks might be a prelude for more
disruptive reprisals by the Kremlin — despite the fact that Russian President
Vladimir Putin, in condemning Saturday’s airstrikes on his Syrian counterpart
and ally, President Bashar al-Assad, indicated Russia might withhold from
retaliating, saying, “History will set things right.”
The high risk
that Saturday’s strikes might have provoked some kind of clash between Western
and Russian forces, and still has the potential to do so, according to British
officials, was illustrated they say, by an undersea cat-and-mouse game in the
hours before the strikes involving a British submarine. A British Astute class
sub was unable, they say, to launch missiles because it couldn’t maneuver into
range as it was forced to evade a Russian sub and two frigates, which were
hunting it.
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