WASHINGTON President Barack Obama told his war-weary country on Saturday that America needs to use limited military force in Syria to deter future chemical weapons attacks, but said he did not want to enter into another costly and protracted war. 
 
 "This would not be another Iraq or Afghanistan," Obama said in his weekly radio and internet address, previewing arguments he will make in a nationally televised address on Tuesday. 
 
 "Any action we take would be limited, both in time and scope - designed to deter the Syrian government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so," Obama said. 
 
 A week ago, Obama said he felt limited strikes in Syria were needed, but added he wanted to ask Congress to authorize the use of military force. 
 
 Neither Democratic nor Republican lawmakers have been enthused about the prospect, partly because Americans strongly oppose getting involved in another Middle Eastern conflict. 
 
 A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday said 56 percent of Americans believed the United States should not intervene, while only 19 percent supported action. 
 
 "I know that the American people are weary after a decade of war, even as the war in Iraq has ended, and the war in Afghanistan is winding down. That's why we're not putting our troops in the middle of somebody else's war," Obama said in his recorded address. 
 
 Obama and his top officials plan an intensive lobbying effort on Capitol Hill next week, scheduling meetings with undecided lawmakers. 
 
 Obama said failing to respond to the August 21 attack that Washington blames on President Bashar al-Assad's government and that killed hundreds of children and more than 1,400 people in total, would threaten U.S. national security by increasing the chance of future chemical attacks from the Syrian government, terrorist groups, or other nations. 
 
 "We are the United States of America. We cannot turn a blind eye to images like the ones we've seen out of Syria," he said. 
 
 (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Peter Cooney) ||||| European Union foreign chief Catherine Ashton says strong response is essential to make clear there is no impunity 
 
 The European Union has called a chemical weapons attack in Damascus a crime against humanity and says it was probably carried out by the Syrian government. 
 
 Following a meeting with the US secretary of state, John Kerry, EU foreign ministers said that any punitive military attack should not be carried out until the delivery of a report by United Nations inspectors. 
 
 Catherine Ashton, the EU's representative for foreign affairs issued a statement on Saturday calling the chemical attack a "blatant violation of international law, a war crime and a crime against humanity". 
 
 She said information from a wide variety of sources had confirmed the chemical attack and "seems to indicate strong evidence that the Syrian regime is responsible" as it is the only party "that possesses chemical weapons agents and the means of their delivery in a sufficient quantity". 
 
 The statement said a "clear and strong response is crucial to make clear that such crimes are unacceptable and that there can be no impunity". 
 
 Ashton's comments came after President Barack Obama returned to the US from the G20 summit in Russia and said that an attack on Syria would not become "another Iraq or Afghanistan". 
 
 "We are the United States of America. We cannot turn a blind eye to images like the ones we've seen out of Syria," he said. 
 
 The president will try to persuade Congress to support him in punishing Syria for using chemical weapons. "Any action we take would be limited, both in time and scope – designed to deter the Syrian government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so," he said on his weekly broadcast on Saturday. 
 
 Obama failed to get international agreement for an attack on Syria at the summit in St Petersburg. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, claimed that a majority of the G20 opposed any US-led intervention, and gave no ground by continuing to insist that the chemical weapons attacks were a provocation by Syrian rebels designed to win international backing for an attack on the Assad regime. 
 
 David Cameron warned that the world could not "contract out" its morality to a Russian veto at the UN security council over its response to the poison gas attack which killed hundreds in a Damascus suburb. 
 
 He claimed that those who blamed Bashar al-Assad's government and backed a strike against the regime had "far the better of the argument". 
 
 Putin declared that any attack without a UN resolution would "violate the law", indicating that he was ready to give further military assistance to the Assad regime if it were attacked. 
 
 "Will we help Syria? We will. And we are already helping – we send arms, we co-operate in the economic sphere," he said. 
 
 The Russian president blames the chemical attack on anti-regime "militants" hoping for support from the outside world, which Cameron said was "impossible to believe". 
 
 Putin listed those backing military action and added: "Mr Cameron is also in favour, but in Britain parliament was against that." 
 
 Obama was left relatively isolated at the G20, as only France indicated it was ready to join the US in an armed response, while Britain, Turkey, Canada and Saudi Arabia voiced support for robust action. 
 
 The US president insisted there was "a growing recognition that we cannot sit idly by" and announced plans to make an address on Syria from the White House on Tuesday. 
 
 Cameron voiced frustration at the argument heard around the table during talks on Syria that no action should be taken unless sanctioned by the security council. 
 
 "If we accept that the only way a response can be made to a country that was massacring half or more than half of its people is if the UN security council votes positively, we are contracting out our foreign policy, our morality, to the potential of a Russian veto," he said. 
 
 He added: "Many of us believe that there is a case for taking action when you are trying to prevent a humanitarian emergency. It's better with the UN security council resolution, but you cannot rule out taking action if you cannot get it. I think we should learn from some of the genocides we've seen in our world that there is an imperative for a line to be drawn." 
 
 The formal communique from the summit made no mention of Syria – which was not on the official agenda and was discussed over dinner – but 11 member states including the UK issued a joint statement supporting "efforts undertaken by the United States and other countries to reinforce the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons". 
 
 It said the world "cannot wait for endless failed processes that can only lead to increased suffering in Syria and regional instability". 
 
 The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Assad's troops fired mortars and artillery early on Saturday at opposition fighters' positions near Moldokhiya, an agricultural area south of Damascus, killing 14 rebels. Two civilians also died in the shelling. 
 
 William Hague, the foreign secretary, is meeting EU foreign ministers in Lithuania, where they will also be joined by the US secretary of state, John Kerry. ||||| The president's White House speech played it safe, doing little to answer the concerns of doves who oppose the war and hawks who find his plan too small to matter. 
 
 Reuters 
 
 With public opinion on Syria ebbing away from him, President Obama seemingly had two choices for his address to the nation Tuesday night: He could deliver a newly impassioned and emotional version of his case that limited military strikes were necessary and effective. Or he could seize on the premise that circumstances had changed and announce a new policy for how to handle them. 
 
 Instead of either, however, Obama chose to play it very safe. 
 
 The president's speech in the White House's East Room was short -- clocking in at a neat 15 minutes -- and offered hardly anything new. As he has for days, Obama argued that while the the civil war in Syria is a tragedy, there was no justification for American intervention until the use of chemical weapons necessitated it. And he praised, if tentatively, the day's major development -- a nascent but fragile agreement involving Russia that would see Syria surrender its chemical weapons and sign an international treaty prohibiting their use. 
 
 He also emphasized that any attack would be very limited in scope. "I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria," he said. "I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo. This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective: deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad's capabilities." 
 
 Much of the speech was structured as a response to common objections to attacking Syria. And it was here that the lack of novel or more developed replies was most striking. A White House address like this is necessarily targeted to all a wide audience, including those who have paid little attention to the Beltway battle over an attack and might be unfamiliar with the debate. Still, with the minimal support he has for a strike collapsing, he seems to be in no position to hit the same notes. 
 
 Nor did he make much of an emotional plea, though he cited the same horrible deaths of children in sarin attacks that Samantha Power and Susan Rice have made in recent days. The president got most fired up, instead, as he closed his remarks. Asking the right to follow through on its commitment to American military force and the left to follow through on it humanitarian ideals, he asked: 
 
 What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way? ... Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong. But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That's what makes America different. That's what makes us exceptional. 
 
 Yet despite the FAQ-like format, Obama perhaps left more questions unanswered than he resolved. 
 
 Disappointingly for hawks and liberal interventionists, the president stubbornly insisted he would not seek to topple Bashar al-Assad -- though in a concession to critics who groaned at John Kerry's promise than an attack would be "unbelievably small," Obama said even a limited campaign would get results: "The United States military doesn't do pinpricks. Even a limited strike will send a message to Assad that no other nation can deliver." But the president didn't offer much reassurance to anyone skeptical about the deterrent power of such a strike, nor did he answer the critique that Assad has killed civilians --including, yes, children -- quite effectively with conventional weapons. 
 
 The administration's argument that sarin attacks in a Syrian neighborhood threaten national security has failed to rouse many in Congress. Obama's reply tonight was elaborate, imagining that failure to act would encourage further attacks by other dictators, endanger regional allies, and in the future perhaps result in American soldiers being gassed. He didn't explain why, for example, Saddam Hussein's use of gas in the 1980s and 1990s didn't create a rash of chemical-weapons attacks, and the vague domino effect and indeterminate timeline seem unlikely to convince the many Americans who have turned against intervention after a decade of wars. Obama's circumspection sometimes undermined his own case, as when he pointed out, "The Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military." 
 
 If the speech was intended to sum up the case for war against Syria, it seemed mostly to provide the sharpest summation of Obama's central paradox. Though the president seems personally upset by the chemical-weapons attacks, he knows Americans are weary of war and has little apparent appetite for it himself, so he has to play it safe. That means he does things like promise American boots won't be on the ground, and insists Assad can't touch America. 
 
 But those arguments undermine the case for war, too. If Assad can't hurt Americans, why is it a national-security concern? If American attacks will be so limited, will they even really make much difference, either to stop the slaughter or as a future deterrent? And if it's so important to prevent gas attacks that "brazenly violate international law," why is Obama so willing to conduct a punitive strike that seems to most experts to violate international law? 
 
 With the nation watching, Obama had a chance to resolve these contradictions, and he didn't do it -- he didn't even try. Luckily for him, speeches seldom matter. If the diplomatic maneuverings to get Assad to turn over his chemical weapons succeed, this speech will look like a moment of wise caution when the president treaded water rather than making waves. If they fail, however, he will have squandered a chance -- will anyone really heed his second White House speech on Syria, should he have to make one?
– President Obama didn't exactly return from the G20 summit with a ringing international endorsement to take action against Syria, but he continued making his case before his own nation this morning via his weekly radio address. Obama hit familiar themes, ones he will surely revisit in his speech to the nation Tuesday night, reports Reuters. "This would not be another Iraq or Afghanistan." "Any action we take would be limited, both in time and scope—designed to deter the Syrian government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so." "I know that the American people are weary after a decade of war, even as the war in Iraq has ended, and the war in Afghanistan is winding down. That's why we're not putting our troops in the middle of somebody else's war." As for the G20 summit: Obama got the backing of 10 countries for a statement that says Bashar al-Assad should be held accountable for using chemical weapons, but the statement pointedly fell short of calling for military action, notes the Los Angeles Times, which concludes that the president "fell well short of an international coalition that might help persuade reluctant lawmakers."