Kerry insists Syria strikes still an option as Obama defends deal with Russia

Kerry insists Syria strikes still an option as Obama defends deal with Russia

Kerry insists Syria strikes still an option as Obama defends deal with Russia, The White House scrambled to regain the political initiative over Syria on Sunday, insisting that US military strikes remained an option despite its deal with Russia to secure chemical weapon stockpiles through a United Nations resolution.

Under pressure from hawks in Washington and Israel, secretary of state John Kerry maintained that "the threat of force is real" if Syria does not comply with the plan to hand over its weapons, which was announced in Geneva on Saturday. "We cannot have hollow words," he said, during a stop-over in Jerusalem on Sunday to help sell the deal to Middle East allies.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama urged critics in Washington to focus on what had been achieved through the talks with Russia rather than the twisting and sometimes contradictory foreign policy path that led him there.

The US strategy was working, though it may not always have been "smooth and disciplined and linear", Obama conceded in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that was broadcast on ABC's This Week on Sunday morning. Obama added: "I'm less concerned about style points. I'm much more concerned with getting the policy right."

US reaction to Saturday's deal, which was struck by Kerry and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has been split squarely along party lines – a stark contrast to the swirling alliances that characterised earlier efforts to seek Congressional authorisation for military action.

Republicans have been overwhelmingly hostile, accusing Obama and Kerry of "selling out" to the Russians and allowing the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to stay in power without any firm guarantee that he will fulfil the promise to hand over weapons.

"This is a Russian plan for Russian interests," Mike Rogers, the chair of the House intelligence committee, told CNN on Sunday morning. "They got exactly what they wanted: Assad here for a year at least and not one ounce of chemical weapons came off the battlefield but we have given up a lot of leverage."

He added: "Putin is playing chess and we're playing tic-tac-toe."

A Syrian minister played into Republican fears on Sunday by welcoming the US-Russian deal as a "victory for Syria won thanks to our Russian friends". In the first comments from the Assad government since Saturday's agreements in Geneva Ali Haidar, the minister of national reconciliation, said they had been achieved by "Russian diplomacy and the Russian leadership".

"On the one hand, they will help Syrians come out of the crisis, and on the other hand, they prevented the war against Syria by having removed a pretext for those who wanted to unleash it," he told the Russian news agency, RIA-Novosti.

Pro-government Syrian newspapers also hailed the deal, headlining the fact that the text does not mention the use of force or sanctions.

Democrats were generally more sympathetic to the White House, amid relief that many would no longer have to vote against the president on the vexed issue of military action.

"I don't know if I trust the Russians but this agreement is a very positive step," said representative Adam Schiff, a member of the intelligence committee. "It's been ugly getting here. If you're goal is to use military force, it's a bad deal, but if your goal is to stop the use of chemical weapons this is about as good a deal as you are going to get."

Obama insisted that dealing with Russia over Syria's chemical weapons did not mean the US had given up wider hopes of seeing Assad removed from power.

"I don't think that Mr Putin has the same values that we do," he said in the ABC interview, which was recorded on Friday, before the deal with Russia was announced. "And I think – obviously – by protecting Mr Assad he has a different attitude about the Assad regime.

"But what I've also said to him directly is that we both have an interest in preventing chaos, we both have an interest in preventing terrorism. The situation in Syria right now is untenable – as long as Mr Assad's in power, there is gonna be some sort of conflict there – and … we should work together to try to find a way in which the interests of all the parties inside of Syria, the Alawites, the Sunnis, the Christians, that everybody is represented and that there is a way of bringing the temperature down."

The United Nations is due on Monday to release its report into the use of chemical weapons in an attack in Damascus on 21 August. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has described it as "an overwhelming report".