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8/29/13

Syria: British Parliament Votes Against Syria Resolution as U.S. Ponders Going Solo - by Abby Ohlheiser

The U.K. House of Commons voted against military action in Syria on Thursday, after a difficult political fight by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, who struggled to convince many members of Parliament in recent days that there was enough evidence on the table to justify a strike against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The government's motion on military action in Syria failed by 13 votes. Earlier today, the government there released the first intelligence reports outlining the case for Assad's culpability in a deadly chemical strike last week.

In an emergency session Thursday evening, a first motion, an amendment by the opposition Labour party, would have demanded compelling evidence from the U.N. before approval of British military action. It failed to pass by 112 votes in the House of Commons. While the U.S. has made their intention to move forward with limited military retaliation against the regime without U.N. support, the issue was more divisive in the U.K.. Cameron's motion on military action lost by a slim margin, 285 to 272, so it's possible that he could try again to pass something supporting U.S. military retaliation against Syria, but it's not clear what, exactly, that would be. The bottom line, here, is that a direct British response towards Syria is off the table.

Read more: U.K. Parliament Votes Against Syria Resolution as U.S. Ponders Going Solo - Abby Ohlheiser - The Atlantic Wire

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