Seven million Syrians displaced by war: UN
Seven million Syrians, or nearly one-third of the population, have been displaced by the country's civil war, but international aid to them has been a "drop in the sea" of humanitarian need, a top UN official said yesterday.
The funding gaps remain wide, with donor countries sending less than one-third the money needed to help those displaced, Tarik Kurdi, the representative of the UN refugee agency in Syria, told The Associated Press.
Syria's brutal two-and-a-half-year-old conflict has also claimed more than 100,000 lives, including hundreds who - according to the US - were killed in chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian regime near Damascus on Aug 21.
Syrian President Bashar Assad's government has denied involvement, instead blaming rebels for the attacks. Neither the US nor the Assad regime has presented proof in public to back up the allegations.
On Monday, Obama was to meet with former political rival Sen John McCain at the White House, hoping the foreign policy hawk will help sell the idea of US military intervention.
On Capitol Hill, senior administration officials briefed lawmakers in private on Sunday to explain why the US was compelled to act against Assad. Further meetings were planned from Monday to Wednesday.
The Arab League, meanwhile, stopped short of endorsing military action. In an emergency meeting in Cairo on Sunday, it called on the United Nations and the international community to take "deterrent" measures under international law to stop the Syrian regime's crimes, but could not agree on whether to back US military strikes.
Two of Assad's most influential foreign backers, China and Russia, lined up against Washington's new attempt to make the case for a military strike.
China is "highly concerned" about possible unilateral military action against Syria and believes the international community must "avoid complicating the Syrian issue and dragging the Middle East down into further disaster," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing on Monday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, meanwhile, dismissed US information given to Moscow on the alleged chemical weapons attack as "absolutely unconvincing."
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