John F. Kerry Quotes About Syria
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[Bashar] Assad himself has said on several occasions recently that if the people of Syria don't believe I should be there in the future, then I would step - I would leave. He has said it. He has, on occasion, hinted that he wants a political settlement of one kind or another. I think it's up to his supporters, his strongest supporters, to make it clear to him that if you're going to save Syria, Assad has made a set of choices - barrel bombing children, gassing his people, torturing his people, engaging in starvation as a tactic of war.
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If the threat is jihadism - and it is - and the threat is the destruction of Syria so that all of these refugees are swamping into Europe and changing the whole character and politics of Europe, this is the time to unite to find a way out.
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If Russia is there [in Syria] alone fighting them [ISIL], guess what? Russia becomes the target and Russia starts seeing - who knows - MANPADs will find their way in there, airplanes will fall out of the sky. They will become vilified. They'll become the new magnet, together with Assad, for the jihadis.
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I accept that friends of ours have decided that the President's non-strike has somehow impacted perceptions of us. But I believe they are dead wrong and I think the critics are dead wrong, and here's why. The President [Barack Obama] made his decision to strike. He announced his decision to strike publicly. And the purpose of the strike was to get the chemical weapons out of Syria. That's the purpose.
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Sunni are the majority of the [Syria], 60 to 65 percent. They've been ruled by [Bashar] Assad, who represents a minority Alawite element, which is about 12, 13 percent. And because of the choices Assad made, it's very difficult to see how you resolve this without buy-in from the Sunni world.
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We have to create a process which has legitimacy for the people of Syria. And we have to have a process where the Russians and the Iranians and the neighbors - all of them, Saudis, Turks, Qataris, a very complicated brew - that you have to bring them together and they can find agreement. That's the fundamental premise of the Geneva Communique that you will have, by mutual consent, a process of transition.
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Those localized efforts take a long time and they don't deal with the larger issue of ISIL and the question of what you're going to do to really have a solution here. We have to save Syria.
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If [Bashar] Assad himself could save this whole process by saying, "I will engage in a managed transition where we all work together to stabilize the government, save the institutions of government, and turn on ISIL and preserve Syria." That could happen. It all depends on one man, and Russia and Iran should not be so stubborn here that they tie this whole thing up simply because of one person.
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I met with many of - a number of [Syrian] refugees in Berlin the other day, and I was struck by how educated, intelligent, and patriotic they are. They want to go back. They love their country. And there are so many of them still in Jordan and in refugee camps in Lebanon and in Turkey, that if you could create the climate within which they could begin to come back, I believe there is such a history of secularism within Syria, even tolerance within Syria, that if we can deal with ISIL, yes. That's the key. And with ISIL there, not a chance.
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The world has to save Syria. I mean, this has dramatic implications for the entire region, globally.
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Let me just say you could end this violence within a very short period of time, have a complete ceasefire - which Iran could control, which Russia could control, which Syria could control, and which we and our coalition friends could control - if one man would merely make it known to the world that he doesn't have to be part of the long-term future; he'll help manage Syria out of this mess and then go off into the sunset, as most people do after a period of public life. If he were to do that, then you could stop the violence and quickly move to management.
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So my judgment is that Syria will move; Syria will change, as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States and the West and economic opportunity that comes with it and the participation that comes with it.
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I had a chance to talk with President [Vladimir] Putin and he clearly said to me very directly, "I will think about that. I will think about this challenge of how we win." Look, this is not easy for Putin. Everybody says, "Oh, Putin's made a big move." Well, Putin is [in Syria] now; and if he wants to fight ISIL alone, that's a challenge, folks.
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People talk about [Bashar] Assad running Syria. He doesn't control his own country. He's down to about 20, 25 percent of the country. What is this fiction that he is somehow the only person who can save Syria? There's - with Assad there, there is no Syria. So that's what the Iranians and the Russians need to really begin to focus in on.
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Nobody's interests are served by what's happening in Syria today. It's a catastrophe. It's the worst human catastrophe since World War II. And, as I said just now, it represents a failure of the entire international community to come to grips with solving it.
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We should focus more on the things we've accomplished, but I mean, obviously Syria disturbs me greatly and I'm not happy with where Syria is.
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We have staring us in the face here an enormous opportunity to actually find a way forward to have peace and stability in Syria, to reconstitute it. It'll take years to do that. This will not be an easy fight even with concerted coordination with respect to ISIL. But it is far more doable with that kind of approach than otherwise.
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The agreement is fundamentally that we want to try to resolve this. The agreement is that ISIL is a threat to everybody, and we need to come together to find a way to fight ISIL. The agreement is that we want to save Syria, keep it unified, keep it secular. So surely in those very fundamental principles on which we could agree.
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We achieved a deal with the Russians that didn't wind up in two days of strikes that would have sent a, quote, "message," but would not have removed the weapons. We struck a deal to get all of the declared weapons out of Syria. Never before in a conflict has that ever happened, that during the conflict weapons of mass destruction are taken out of the zone of conflict. And thank God we did that, because if we hadn't done that, today ISIL would have those chemical weapons in large parts of the country.
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The Russians need to understand that you cannot have peace [in Syria] unless you resolve the question of Sunni buy-in.
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You cannot bring peace in Syria as long as [Bashar] Assad is, in fact, there.
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This revolution began with young people in Syria demonstrating because they wanted a future. They wanted opportunity, education, and so forth. They went out and they did it. Thugs came out and beat them up. The parents got angry that the thugs beat the kids up, and they went out and demonstrated, and they were met with bullets. They were killed. That's how this began.
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I mean, all of these things that [Bashar Assad] has done, there's no way even if President Obama wanted to just play along that you could actually achieve peace, because there are 65 million Sunni in between Baghdad and the border of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, who will never, ever again accept Assad as a member - as a legitimate leader.
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There's an agreement that Syria should be a unified country, united; that it needs to be secular; that ISIL needs to be taken on; and that there needs to be a managed transition, but there is a difference obviously in what that means and what that outcome may or may not be.
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