Obama welcomes Syria chemical deal
President Barack Obama has welcomed an agreement to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile as an “important, concrete step” toward the ultimate goal of eliminating them but warned that the US remains prepared to act if the attempt at a diplomatic solution fails.
Mr Obama said the deal between the US and Russia offers the chance to destroy weapons the US and more than 30 governments maintain were used by President Bashar Assad to kill more than 1,400 Syrians during an attack last month in the suburbs of the capital of Damascus.
Mr Assad has blamed the use of chemical weapons on rebels who have been fighting for more than two years to unseat him.
“I welcome the progress made between the United States and Russia through our talks in Geneva, which represents an important, concrete step toward the goal of moving Syria’s chemical weapons under international control so that they may ultimately be destroyed,”Mr Obama said in a statement released soon after he arrived at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington for his weekly golf game.
“This framework provides the opportunity for the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons in a transparent, expeditious and verifiable manner, which could end the threat these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people but to the region and the world,” he said.
Mr Obama threatened military strikes against Syria in response to the August 21 attack, saying the use of chemical weapons anywhere must not go unchecked. But in an unexpected reversal, he put off ordering a strike to seek backing from Congress, but lawmakers in both political parties overwhelmingly opposed the military option.
After Syria agreed to a surprise Russian proposal to put its chemical weapons under international control,Mr Obama asked Congress to delay a vote to allow time for tense negotiations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to “bear fruit.”
Besides possibly helping Syria avoid punishing US military strikes, the agreement Mr Kerry announced today in Geneva also offered Mr Obama and Congress a potential way out of an unpopular situation. Polls show many Americans overwhelmingly oppose US military involvement in another Middle Eastern country.
Mr Obama said the international community expects Syria to live up to its public commitments to hand over its chemical weapons stockpile.
Cautioning that more work remains despite the “important progress” the deal represents, he said the U.S. will continue working with Russia, Britain, France, the United Nations and others to “ensure that this process is verifiable, and that there are consequences should the Assad regime not comply with the framework.”
“And, if diplomacy fails, the United States remains prepared to act,” he warned.
No comments:
Post a Comment