Obama Asks Congress to Postpone Action on Syria While Diplomacy Is Pursued
Pool photo by Evan Vucci
Obama Addresses the Nation on Syria:
President Obama spoke Tuesday evening about the evolving confrontation with Syria and the possibility of a diplomatic solution.
By MARK LANDLER and JONATHAN WEISMAN
Published: September 10, 2013 899 Comments
WASHINGTON — President Obama, facing an almost certain defeat in
obtaining Congressional support for a military strike against Syria,
made the case for that strike to the nation Tuesday night, but said he
would give serious consideration to a proposal by Russia that
international monitors take over and destroy Syria’s arsenal of chemical
weapons.
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Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Obama walked toward the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday.
Readers’ Comments
"The Russians are no independent party in this whole mess. My guess is that their plan will achieve nothing and we'll be back to discussing an attack in two weeks."Mike, Ohio
“It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed and any
agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitment but
this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical
weapons without the use of force, particular because Russia is one of
Assad’s strongest allies,” Mr. Obama said in a speech delivered in the
White House.
But Mr. Obama said he has asked Congressional leaders to postpone a vote
to authorize the use of force while he pursues what he described as
“this diplomatic path,"even while making the moral case for punishing
Syria for its deadly use of chemical weapons.
“When dictators commit atrocities they depend upon the world to look
away until those horrifying pictures fade from memory,” he said. “But
these things happened. The facts cannot be denied. The question is now
what is the United States and the international community prepared to do
about it. Because what happened to those people, to those children, is
not only a violation of international law but a threat to our security.”
But in a speech that only 48 hours ago was going to be a call to arms,
Mr. Obama offered a qualified endorsement of a Russian proposal that his
own advisers conceded was rife with risk, given Russia’s steadfast
refusal to agree to any previous measures to pressure its longtime
client in Syria. And his speech was to be a frank acknowledgment of how
radically the political and diplomatic landscape had shifted in just a
few days.
On Capitol Hill, at the United Nations and in foreign capitals,
officials flocked to endorse Russia’s proposal as an alternative to
involving the United States in the two-and-a-half-year-old civil war in
Syria. The proposal also won the backing of the Syrian government: the
foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, said Tuesday that Syria would turn
over its chemical weapons arsenal to Russia, the United Nations and
“other countries” — a startling concession, given that as recently as
this week Mr. Assad had disputed that Syria even possessed chemical
weapons.
Still, administration officials, lawmakers and diplomats all expressed
doubts about the Russian plan. Some said it would allow Syria to play
for time and was calculated to undermine the drive for Congressional and
international support for a strike. Others said the idea of securing
chemical weapons stockpiles in the midst of a brutal civil war was
fanciful.
Moreover, the diplomatic efforts — which began after Russia’s foreign
minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, announced his proposal on Monday — quickly
ran into trouble. A meeting of the United Nations Security Council was
canceled Tuesday afternoon after Russia clashed with the United States
and France over whether to make its proposal binding and back it up with
the threat of force.
“We need a full resolution from the Security Council to have the
confidence that this has the force it ought to have,” Secretary of State
John Kerry said in a social media interview sponsored by Google. “Right
now the Russians are in a slightly different place on that.”
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov will meet in Geneva on Thursday to work out
these disagreements. Before Russia made its announcement, Mr. Kerry
expressed blunt skepticism that Syria could be trusted to turn over its
stockpile, which is dispersed in multiple locations around the country.
In testimony to Congress on Tuesday, he described the Obama
administration’s position on the Russian plan.
“It has to be swift, it has to be real, it has to be verifiable,” Mr.
Kerry told the House Armed Services Committee. “It cannot be a delaying
tactic.”
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