
September 10, 2013
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama has said he will hold off on plans for a military strike in Syria if the country agrees to surrender its chemical weapons to international gatekeepers, as Russia suggested Monday.
But Obama has doubts that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Western countries are convinced was responsible for gassing his own citizens last month, would cooperate.
“I want to make sure that the norm against the use of chemical weapons is maintained,” Obama told Diane Sawyer Monday during an interview with ABC News. “If we can do that without a military strike, that is overwhelmingly my preference.”
Meanwhile, here’s how others reacted to the news.