L
LequteMan
Guest
The US secretary of state John Kerry has said that President Bashar al-Assad has one week to hand over his entire stock of chemical weapons to avoid a military attack. Headded that he expects Assad to be uncooperative.
Kerry said he had no doubt that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack in east Damascus on 21 August.
He said the US had tracked the Syrian chemical weapons stock for years and only three people had control over the movement and use of chemical weapons insideSyria– Assad, one of his brothers Maher al-Assad, and a senior general.
He said the entire US intelligence community believes Assad was responsible.
"The United Statesof America, President Obama, myself, others are in full agreement that the end of the conflict in Syria requires a political solution." He said.
Kerry warned that if other nations were not prepared to act on the issue of chemical weapons, "you are giving people complete license to do whatever they want and to feel so they can do with impunity".
He said America is planning an "unbelievably small" attack on Syria. "We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria's civil war."
But he insisted such a solution was currently impossible if "one party believes that he can rub out countless numbers of his own citizens with impunity using chemicals that have been banned for 100 years".
The US Senate is due to vote this week on whether to approve an attack and Kerry was ambivalent over whether Barack Obama would use his powers to ignore the legislative chamber, if it were to reject an attack.
