Karins: US strike against Syria comes five years too late

RIGA - The US missile strike on a Syrian airbase comes five years too late, said Latvian MEP Krisjanis Karins (Unity) in an interview with the Latvian public television on Monday.

Asked whether the US action is the way to sooner end the conflict in Syria, the MEP said that, in his opinion, such act comes five years too late. Karins believes that former US president Barack Obama should have done something similar when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attacked his own residents with chemical weapons for the first time.

"The US then had a chance to destroy Assad’s air force, reducing his ability to continue the war. US President Donald Trump is doing that years later. I don’t know whether it will change anything now," he said.

The MEP said that in order to solve the situation in a diplomatic way, both parties need to wish to talk.

As reported, US forces fired a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase on April 7 in response to what President Donald Trump called a "barbaric" chemical attack he blamed on the Damascus regime. The massive strike - the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad's government and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office - marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year civil war. The strike targeted radars, aircraft, air defense systems and other logistical components at the military base south of Homs in central Syria.