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| Senators John McCain (left) and Lindsey Graham Saturday |
U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Saturday released the following statement
on the U.S.-Russian agreement on Syria:
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"What concerns us most is that
our friends and enemies will take the same lessons from this agreement – they
see it as an act of provocative weakness on America's part. We cannot imagine a
worse signal to send to Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon.
"Without a UN Security Council
Resolution under Chapter 7 authority, which threatens the use of force for
non-compliance by the Assad regime, this framework agreement is meaningless.
Assad will use the months and months afforded to him to delay and deceive the
world using every trick in Saddam Hussein's playbook. It requires a willful
suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start
of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama Administration is being led into it
by Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.
"What's worse, this agreement
does nothing to resolve the real problem in Syria, which is the underlying
conflict that has killed 110,000 people, driven millions from their homes,
destabilized our friends and allies in the region, emboldened Iran and its
terrorist proxies, and become a safe haven for thousands of al-Qaeda affiliated
extremists. Is the message of this agreement that Assad is now our negotiating
partner, and that he can go on slaughtering innocent civilians and destabilizing
the Middle East using every tool of warfare, so long as he does not use
chemical weapons? That is morally and strategically indefensible.
"The only way this underlying
conflict can be brought to a decent end is by significantly increasing our support
to moderate opposition forces in Syria. We must strengthen their ability to
degrade Assad's military advantage, change the momentum on the battlefield, and
thereby create real conditions for a negotiated end to the conflict."
