ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The US defense secretary consulted with his British counterpart hours before US President Donald Trump gave orders to launch cruise missiles from a ship in the Mediterranean Sea at an air base in Syria, after the failure of United Nations Security Council members to come to a joint resolution on Thursday.
"The American defense secretary Jim Mattis consulted me early yesterday evening about our assessment of the regime's culpability for the chemical weapons attack and we reviewed the need to understand and to deal with any likely Russian reactions to the attack," British Defence Minister Michael Fallon said on BBC TV.
The United States and United Kingdom are two of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
The launch took place about three hours after the Security Council failed to agree on an investigation into Tuesday's apparent chemical attack in the Idlib province of Syria.
A Russian diplomat speaking to reporters after Thursday night's Security Council meeting said "a resolution should not, can not, and will not pre-judge the outcome of an investigation. First of all things need to be investigated ... the crime scene at Khan Sheikhun."
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel released a joint statement laying blame on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the strikes.
“President Assad alone bears responsibility for this development,” Merkel and Hollande said. “His repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own population had to be sanctioned.”
Germany doesn't have a permanent or current seat on the Council.
China and Russia are the other two permanent members.
Russia has expressed its concerns with the United States acting unilaterally in targeting the air base in Syria.
"This is dangerous because this runs counter to the collective struggle against international terrorism, against this global threat of contemporaneity," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday according to state news TASS.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has been meeting on Thursday and Friday with Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, which is also where Trump announced that he had ordered the strikes.
China’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying, during a daily briefing on Friday, said her country was urging calm.
"The latest developments in Syria again speak to the urgent need for a political settlement to resolve the Syria issue," Chunying said. “We call on all relevant parties to resolutely stick to promoting a political settlement and not abandon efforts to find a political settlement."
