Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today stressed that the United States wants to see peaceful change in Syria during an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS Evening News.
Ms. Clinton also emphasized that President Obama has been working very hard to marshal international opinion to halt President Asad’s regime brutalities against its people.
“When we started with our criticism of Asad, people, to be very frank, kind of said, “Well, yeah, the United States doesn’t get along with Syria, so that’s to be expected.” And we have spent an enormous amount of diplomatic time and effort creating what is a crescendo of condemnatory comments from an increasingly large chorus of international opinion.” -Ms. Clinton
She highlighted that what is important is that the Syrian people know that the United States is on the side of a peaceful transition to democracy. She added that the United States believes that they have the same right as people anywhere to choose their own leaders, to have the kind of democratic institutions that will maximize their individual opportunities.
“But we also took a long time convincing even our colleagues on the Security Council to issue a statement, which we finally got done about 10 days ago. And then in rapid succession, we’ve seen the Arab League, we’ve seen the King of Saudi Arabia, we’ve seen the Gulf Cooperating Council, we’ve seen a very strong stand by Turkey and certainly our European friends.” -Ms. Clinton
Ms. Clinton stated that the U.S. government is building what she thinks is a much more persuasive case that the international community – not just the United States – wants to see peaceful change in Syria.
