American Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley ruled out any potential direct discussions between the U.S. and Syrian President Bashar Assad Sunday, saying the Syrian dictator’s regime is “not worthy” of such talks.
“We would never want to have direct talks with Syria at this point. They’re not worthy of talks with the United States,” Haley said on CBS’ “Face The Nation.”
“They have done nothing but brutalize their people and destroy their land, all in the name of power. So, our goal is that, yes, we will be at the talks as we have been. Related to the Geneva process, the United States is always there and we’ll continue to be there. But, no, we are not going to have any one-on-one talks with Assad.”
Haley said the airstrikes from American planes and missiles on Friday evening were the result of cumulative transgressions by the Assad regime.
Haley said the U.S. and her allies have been working through diplomatic means to investigate reports of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, but Assad’s Russian friends on the Security Council have vetoed all action.
Facing a roadblock on the diplomatic front, it was time for military action, Haley said.
“This was cumulative, Assad had been using chemical weapons multiple times. But more so this was about the Security Council resolutions,” she said. “We had up until this point had six different resolutions that would have dealt with investigative mechanisms for chemical weapons and Russia had vetoed all of them. And so we felt like we had gone through every diplomatic measure of talking that we could. It was time for action.”
