The Vatican’s official daily on Tuesday blasted western powers for preparing possible military action against Syria despite an ongoing UN investigation into an alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus.
“The tones are becoming ever more drastic and the action being taken by the United Nations appears subjected to a sort of crossfire,” the newspaper said.
“Various international actors appear no longer to consider the investigation a determining factor,” it said, adding that “what commitment there was” to a negotiated settlement “appears to be dying out.”
The Vatican’s permanent observer at the United Nations in Geneva, Monsignor Silvano Tomasi, last week cast doubt on the Syrian government’s responsibility for the apparent chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus.
The Vatican is against any armed intervention, pointing to the havoc caused by the US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003.