Hollande talks tough on Syria at UN

French President François Hollande called for "coercive" measures to force Syria to scrap its chemical weapons arsenal, as promised, at the UN General Assembly. On the sidelines of the meeting, Hollande met Iran's new president, Hassan Rowhani.

French President François Hollande addresses the UN General Assembly Reuters.

At the UN meeting, both Hollande and US President Barack Obama insisted that Bashar al-Assad's regime was behind the chemical weapons attack in Damascus, which US intelligence claims killed more than 1,400 people., and called for a "strong" Security Council resolution on the Russian-backed plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons.

Obama said the United States was ready to "use all elements of our power, including military force" in the Middle East to defend "core interests" such as ensuring oil supplies and eradicating weapons of mass destruction.

UN inspectors returned to Syria Wednesday in the first step in implementing the weapons agreement.

Hollande called for the Security Council resolution to contain a reference to chapter VII of the UN charter, which allows for the recourse to armed action, arguing that it would have no credibility without that possibility.

He also called on Security Council members to collectively renounce their right of veto "in certain cases", especially those concerning large-scale violence.

And the French president called for a new international conference on Syria to prepare for the establishemnt of a "transitional government" to establish peace and prepare elections.

Later he told journalists that Iran would be able to attend the conference if accepted that aim.

Hollande described his meeting with Rowhani, who has struck a more conciliatory attitude to the big powers than his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "frank, direct and firm".

"The French president is now convinced that a political solution [in Syria] must involve Tehran," writes RFI's Florent Guignard at the UN. "But there is still some work to do because Hassan Rowhani has the same position as Russia. The Iranian president told François Hollande that he considers that the opposition to Bashar al-Assad are all terrrorists and so there can be no transitional government."

Hollande also issued a "cry of alarm" about the situation in the Central African Republic in his speech to the General Assembly.

He called for logistical and financial support for the African force in the country, where "there is chaos and civilian populations are the first victims".

Referring to the "barbarous attack in Nairobi" of the danger of "terrorism" on the continent, he cited the French-led military operation in Mali as an example of how to fight it.