G7 backs US on Syria

President Bashar al-Assad should not be part of Syria's future, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said yesterday, as G7 allies rejected a call for new sanctions on Damascus and its key ally Moscow.

Washington has stepped up the pressure on Russia to rein in Assad after a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held Syrian town that killed at least 87 civilians and triggered retaliatory US missile strikes on a Syrian air base.

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As G7 foreign ministers urged a diplomatic push to end the six-year conflict and create a lasting peace for a unified Syria, Tillerson said: "Our hope is Bashar al-Assad will not be part of that future."

With a growing gulf between the US and Assad's main ally Russia, the G7 ministers threw their support behind Tillerson as he headed for vital talks on the Syrian conflict in Moscow.

"To be clear, our military action was a direct response to the Assad regime's barbarism," Tillerson said at the G7 meeting in Italy.

"The United States' priority in Syria and Iraq remains the defeat of ISIS," he added, referring to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday warned of future chemical weapons "provocations" in Syria to frame President Bashar al-Assad.

"We have information from various sources that such provocations -- I cannot call them otherwise -- are being prepared in other regions of Syria, including in the southern outskirts of Damascus, where they are again planning to throw some kind of substance and accuse Syrian official authorities of using it," Putin said at a televised press conference.

NO CONSENSUS ON SANCTIONS

The G7 ministers failed to agree on whether fresh sanctions should be imposed on Damascus and Moscow.

"At the moment there is no consensus on new sanctions as an effective instrument," Italy's Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said, after his British counterpart Boris Johnson had raised the issue.

But after talks in the Tuscan city German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said: "All the G7 states want to avoid a military escalation and want a political solution without a new spiral of violence.

"We want to bring Russia around to supporting the political process for a peaceful resolution of the Syrian conflict."

The German diplomat said Tillerson had "all our support" for his talks in Moscow, where he will meet his counterpart Sergei Lavrov although the Kremlin has not said if there will be a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

The US has warned Damascus that further use of chemical weapons could bring fresh retaliation.

US warships in the Mediterranean on Friday fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat air base near Homs, destroying an airfield from which Washington believes Assad's jets launched the deadly chemical attack.

The strike was the first time Washington had intervened directly against the regime of Assad, who is fighting a six-year civil war with the backing of Russia and Iran.

While Moscow has suggested that civilians were poisoned by rebel weapons, Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag said yesterday that tests proved the deadly nerve agent sarin was used in the suspected chemical attack in northwestern Syria.

"It has been identified that sarin gas was used," he said, quoted by state-run news agency Anadolu, after analysis of blood and urine samples of the casualties from the attack in Idlib province who were brought to Turkey.

BARREL BOMBS

"The United States will not passively stand by while Assad murders innocent people with chemical weapons, which are prohibited by international law and which were declared destroyed," Pentagon chief James Mattis said Monday.

"The Syrian government would be ill-advised ever again to use chemical weapons."

The warning came as White House spokesman Sean Spicer appeared to lower the threshold for new US action against Assad to include barrel bombs, a crude yet hugely destructive weapon of choice for the Syrian leader.