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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