Obama says Syria chemical weapons attack threatens Israel, Jordan

President Barack Obama said on Friday the chemical weapons attack in Syria threatened U.S. allies Israel and Jordan and said his preference would have been for the international community to move forward on a response.
   
While meeting with visiting leaders at the White House, Obama told reporters the United States was still in the planning process for a response to the chemical weapons use in Syria.
   
He said he was looking at a limited action against Syria that would not involve an open-ended commitment or major military operation.

This comes as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a broad case for limited U.S. military action against Syria for its suspected use of chemical weapons, saying it could not go unpunished for such a "crime against humanity."
   
Kerry also stressed anything that the United States might do would be carefully tailored and would not in any way resemble the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, nor its intervention to help topple former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

He also noted that anything US may do on Syria will be a message to Iran and Hezbollah; it will be based on its own timeline.

 Meanwhile, a U.S. intelligence report disclosed that there was "high confidence" that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons multiple times in the last year, including the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus.

A Syrian chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21 killed 1,429 Syrian civilians, including 426 children, an unclassified U.S. intelligence report added.
   
The intelligence gathered for the U.S. report included an intercepted communication by a senior official intimately familiar with the attack as well as other human, signals and satellite intelligence, the four-page report said.

Earlier, President Barack Obama met with senior national security advisers at the White House to discuss plans for possible military action against Syria.
           
Obama says the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad perpetrated the attack. But he has yet to present definitive evidence to back up the assertion.
    
 
AP/REUTERS