Australia to hold talks on military intervention in Syria

Australia announced Wednesday that it is ready to hold talks on military intervention in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which put forward by France on Tuesday, but warned of several obstacles. The United Nations Security Council is unlikely to authorize an intervention given Russia and China's opposition to such moves, Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr told reporters. In his first television interview on Tuesday, two weeks after his inauguration, French President Francois Hollande said that the use of armed force could be possible in Syria following the gruesome Houla massacre. The French president called for tightening sanctions on Syria and said that he would try to convince his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to back UN Security Council sanctions against Damascus during their meeting in Paris on Friday.