The international community has started thinking about the option of a military intervention in Syria to check the bloodshed in the Middle East country.
French President Francois Hollande said in Paris that his government was not ruling out an "armed intervention" if the U.N. Security Council deliberates it.
He is set to discuss the issue with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin when the two recently inaugurated leaders meet in the French capital later this week.
Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr said he was open to "thorough" discussions about military intervention in Syria, but warned that there were significant logistical and political hurdles before intervening in the war-torn country.
Talking to reporters in Canberra on Wednesday, he said the Syrian Army, "hugely more powerful than that of Libya," had considerable ground-to-air missile defenses, which would make it very hard to enforce a no-fly zone as the NATO did in the North African country to get it rid of the Moammar Qadhafi regime last year.
The United States is not yet politically in favor of a military intervention in Syria, but Pentagon has indicated such a possibility, touting its "responsibility to look at the full spectrum of options and to make them available if they're requested."
White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday that the Obama administration remained opposed to military action in Syria, on the grounds that it might only lead to more carnage.
But speaking to reporters at the Pentagon about the ongoing and destabilizing situation in Syria on the same day, press secretary George Little said the focus remained on the diplomatic and economic track "but at the end of the day we in the Department of Defense have a responsibility to look at the full spectrum of options and to make them available if they're requested."
Little added "we share the shock over the atrocities that we're seeing in Syria with our international partners. And we have an interest, of course, in stability in the region."
The United States has for decades played a key role in trying to provide peace, stability and security for that region, he said.
Defense Department officials have been in regular contact with international partners and countries in the region to express "our collective dismay at what's happening in Syria and to try to see if there are things we can do to bring pressure to bear on the Assad regime to stop what they're doing against their own people," the press secretary said.
"That's of course the prudent thing to do," Little added, "when you see a crisis like this in a very important region of the world."
Assad's troops and a government-backed militia were suspected behind the massacre of 108 Syrians, mostly women and children, in the Houla region on May 25.
In protest, ten countries -- the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland -- on Tuesday expelled Syrian diplomats.
On the same day, U.N.-Arab League Special Envoy to Syria Kofi Annan held talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He said the country had reached a "tipping point" after more than a year of conflict, and that the six-point international peace plan for Syria was not being implemented "as it must be."
The United States has said that it will continue to take the lead to pressure the Assad regime economically, politically, and diplomatically, and continue to try to tighten the noose in consultation with its allies and partners over the coming days.
Kofi Annan's deputy will make a report on Syria in U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, "and we expect a full range of consultations on it," said U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland.
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June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.