Syria’s future will not include Assad: US

The US has ruled out the possibility of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad having any role in the future of the Arab country, asserting that he has no other option but to go.

“Syria’s future will not and cannot include Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian people have decided that,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told presspersons.

“His hands are drenched in blood, the blood of his own people... Assad has to go,” Carney said.

The US, he said, has continued its role as the single largest donor of humanitarian aid to the Syrian people, who are suffering so mightily under the wrath of Bashar al-Assad.

“We will continue to work with the Syrian opposition to help it organise itself and to help it in its work to prepare for a post-Assad Syria, for a Syria in which the aspirations and the rights of the Syrian people are respected,” he said.

Meanwhile, US Vice-President Joe Biden today left for Germany where he is scheduled to meet tomorrow the Syrian opposition leaders and UN Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi.

During a conference call with presspersons ahead of Biden’s trip, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said the Syrian regime has by any measure completely failed to maintain its own domestic and international legitimacy through the actions that it’s taken against its own people principally.

“At the same time, we’ve been very clear that Syria should not further destabilise the region by transferring, for instance, weaponry to Hezbollah. And we also, of course, have been very clear beyond that that we’re closely monitoring Syria’s chemical weapons as well,” he said.

The Vice-President, in his meetings with, again, the leadership of the Syrian opposition as well as other international partners, is going to be discussing how they can continue to provide humanitarian assistance to the country to deal with a very grave humanitarian situation.

“We’ll be discussing our continued political and non-lethal support to the opposition that is helping them coalesce and become more organised and provide certain services such as medical services to the Syrian people,” he said.

“We’ll be discussing the political way forward. And what we would like to see from other countries, including Russia, is an acknowledgment that Bashar al-Assad must go and that there needs to be a transition within Syria to a new government. So we’ll be discussing with the various players how we can support a transition within Syria that allows for the aspirations of the Syrian people to be met and for stability to be restored,” Rhodes said.

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