Putin calls in John Kerry’s ‘off the cuff’ comments, Syria may surrender chemical weapons to avoid war
In the wake of an off-the-cuff blunder, Secretary of State John Kerry might have accidentally given Russian President Vladmir Putin the opportunity to seize the international diplomatic waters and buy Syria some time.
Russia and Syria have been quick to embrace the remarks by Kerry that Assad could avoid American air strikes by giving up all his chemical weapons within a week.
Syrians hold photos of Assad and Putin during a pro-regime protest in front of the Russian embassy in Damascus, Syria, Sunday, March 4, 2012. Flickr FreedomHouse
Within hours, the State Department was forced to walk Kerry’s new red line back with the claim that he was making a “rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons he has denied he used.”
It seems, then, reasonable to conclude that Kerry spoke out of turn.
Kerry was not authorized to offer Syria an “out” or a new ultimatum.
President Obama conceded that the idea of monitoring and ultimately destroying Syria’s arsenal “could potentially be a significant breakthrough.” The Senate postponed a vote scheduled for Wednesday on whether to back a proposed punitive strike.
“I think you have to take it with a grain of salt, initially,” Obama said in an interview with NBC that was among several he gave Monday in pursuit of public backing for a military strike in response to an alleged Aug. 21 gas attack on Syrian civilians.
“We are going to run this to ground,” Obama said. “We’re going to make sure that we see how serious these proposals are.”
[…] are told a Kerry gaffe, an impressive display of Putin’s diplomatic jiu-jitsu, and – most of all – the “credible threat” of war led to what the Obamaites and […]
[…] are told a Kerry gaffe, an impressive display of Putin’s diplomatic jiu-jitsu, and – most of all – the “credible threat” of war led to what the Obamaites and […]
[…] are told a Kerry gaffe, an impressive display of Putin’s diplomatic jiu-jitsu, and – most of all – the “credible threat” of war led to what the Obamaites and […]
[…] are told a Kerry gaffe, an impressive display of Putin’s diplomatic jiu-jitsu, and – most of all – the “credible threat” of war led to what the Obamaites and […]