President Obama’s unwillingness to impose sanctions on Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his supporters has left the United States “unable to stop thousands more deaths” in Syria, according to a top House Republican.
“Assad’s ability to inflict more terror on the Syrian people remains unrestrained,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said Thursday. “With no plan and no leverage, I fear we will be unable to stop thousands more deaths as Assad trains his sights on other regions still under opposition control.”
House Republicans and Democrats developed a sanctions package that would punish Assad and anyone who aided his military, but Obama’s team and Senate Democrats opposed it due to concern that it would upset the potential for negotiations with Russia, Assad’s strongest ally. Secretary of State John Kerry called Thursday for another round of talks to implement a ceasefire throughout in Aleppo and then throughout Syria.
“We want safe passage, corridors of evacuation, which we’re beginning today to see perhaps take shape,” he said in a speech Thursday. “But we want to see those for both civilians and fighters who choose to evacuate the city. We want full access for the delivery of humanitarian supplies to people in need throughout Syria. And with these steps, we are convinced that the killing and the suffering in Syria could stop, and it could stop very, very quickly, if Russia and the regime made the decision to do so.”
Kerry has long tried to implement such a deal, but Russian military intervention in Syria allowed Assad to rebuff negotiations and concentrate instead on destroying rebels whom the U.S. regards as “legitimate Syrian opposition” but has provided with less support than Russia gave Assad.
“Everyone has reconfirmed to me their readiness to go to Geneva for discussions aimed at putting an end to this horrific war,” Kerry said Thursday. “So that’s the only way that anybody I’ve talked to with any common sense and with any strategic vision says you can end this war. It will take negotiations, and they haven’t taken place in all of these years — any real negotiations.”
