Washington: Noting that the United States is working with its allies to help end the civil war in Syria, President Barack Obama has said that the country has both a moral and national security obligation to stop the slaughter as being launched by the Assad regime.
"We have both a moral obligation and a national security interest in, A, ending the slaughter in Syria, but, B, also ensuring that we`ve got a stable Syria that is representative of all the Syrian people, and is not creating chaos for its neighbors," Obama told reporters in a joint news conference with his visiting South Korean counterpart Park Geun-Hye yesterday.
He said that for the last two years, the US has been active in trying to ensure that Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian President, exits the stage, and the political transition could be started in the strife-torn country.
"My job is to constantly measure our very real and legitimate humanitarian and national security interests in Syria, but measuring those against my bottom line, which is what`s in the best interest of America`s security and making sure that I`m making decisions not based on a hope and a prayer, but on hard-headed analysis in terms of what will actually make us safer and stabilise the region," Obama said.
He said that the US has evidences that there has been the use of chemical weapons inside of Syria.
"But don`t make decisions based on `perceived`. I can`t organise international coalitions around `perceived`. We`ve tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn`t work out well," he said.
"So we want to make sure that we have the best analysis possible. We want to make sure that we are acting deliberately," the US President said.
Obama pointed out that there have been several instances during the course of his presidency where he said he was going to do something and it ended up getting done.
"And there were times when there were folks on the sidelines wondering why hasn`t it happened yet and what`s going on and why didn`t it go on tomorrow?
But in the end, whether it`s bin Laden or Gaddafi, if we say we`re taking a position, I would think at this point the international community has a pretty good sense that we typically follow through on our commitments," he added.
PTI
