Abbott backs US action against Syria

Tony Abbott has backed US military strikes against Syria but says they must be carefully targeted. Source: AAP

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has backed any US military action against Syria but says it has to be carefully targeted and proportionate so it doesn't make a bad situation worse.

Mr Abbott said a political solution to avoid the need for military action would be terrific but wasn't likely.

As well, there was a precedent for military strikes in circumstances where Russia vetoed any United Nations Security Council resolution.

He said the Syrian regime's use of poison gas against its own people was an utter abomination.

"That said, any punitive strike has got to be targeted, it's got to be proportionate and it's got to be carefully considered to try to ensure that as far as is humanly possible we aren't making a bad situation worse," he told ABC television.

In the latest development, US President Barack Obama will now ask Congress to authorise military action against Syria, lifting the threat of immediate strikes on President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Mr Abbott said all Australian governments instinctively wanted to support our closest ally, the US, and also to uphold the universal human decencies.

He said just three nations possessed the ability to take military action against Syria: the US; Britain, which had ruled itself out; and France, which had very limited capacity.

President Obama has branded the UN Security Council as completely paralysed. Mr Abbott said that was a difficulty between the US, Britain and France on one side and Russia and China on the other.

"Where the security council is for whatever reason ineffective, there is precedent for right-thinking powers to take action and that was in the former Yugoslavia when Britain, the US and other countries took action in Kosovo," he said.

Mr Abbott said the Syrian conflict was a civil war between two pretty unsavoury sides.

"It's not goodies versus baddies, it's baddies versus baddies and that's why it's very important that we don't make a very difficult situation worse," he said.

Labor says this shows why Mr Abbott is not fit to represent Australia in any international forum.

Campaign spokeswoman Penny Wong said Mr Abbott sounded like he was talking about a game of cops and robbers games when discussing foreign policy.

"When asked about the difficult situation in Syria and what his view about this was, his view on foreign policy appears to be not always goodies versus baddies but it can be baddies versus baddies," she told Sky News.

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