U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaking Monday night |
“Anyone
who could claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or
fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass,” U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry said in a seven-minute statement on Monday night.
He
was referring to the chemical attack by Syrian President Bashar Assad regime
forces in the Damascus region on August 21.
Rockets
with chemical agents hit three Damascus suburbs while residents were still
sleeping. Some 1,300 people were killed in the dawn strike.
“Moreover,
we know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons. We
know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets. We know
that the regime has been determined to clear the opposition from those very
places where the attacks took place. And with our own eyes, we have all of us
become witnesses,” he said,
“We
have additional information about this attack, and that information is being
compiled and reviewed together with our partners, and we will provide that
information in the days ahead,” Kerry added.
Following is the full text of Secretary Kerry’s statement. He did not take questions.
* *
* * *
Well,
for the last several days President Obama and his entire national security team
have been reviewing the situation in Syria. And today I want to provide an
update on our efforts as we consider our response to the use of chemical
weapons.
What
we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies
any code of morality. Let me be clear. The indiscriminate slaughter of
civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by
chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable. And
despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is
undeniable.
The
meaning of this attack goes beyond the conflict on Syria itself. And that
conflict has already brought so much terrible suffering. This is about the
large-scale indiscriminate use of weapons that the civilized world long ago
decided must never be used at all, a conviction shared even by countries that
agree on little else.
There
is a clear reason that the world has banned entirely the use of chemical
weapons. There is a reason the international community has set a clear standard
and why many countries have taken major steps to eradicate these weapons. There
is a reason why President Obama has made it such a priority to stop the
proliferation of these weapons, and lock them down where they do exist. There
is a reason why President Obama has made clear to the Assad regime that this
international norm cannot be violated without consequences. And there is a
reason why no matter what you believe about Syria, all peoples and all nations
who believe in the cause of our common humanity must stand up to assure that
there is accountability for the use of chemical weapons so that it never
happens again.
Last
night, after speaking with foreign ministers from around the world about the
gravity of this situation, I went back and I watched the videos -- the videos
that anybody can watch in the social media, and I watched them one more
gut-wrenching time. It is really hard to express in words the human suffering
that they lay out before us.
As
a father, I can’t get the image out of my head of a man who held up his dead
child, wailing while chaos swirled around him, the images of entire families
dead in their beds without a drop of blood or even a visible wound, bodies
contorting in spasms, human suffering that we can never ignore or forget.
Anyone who could claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be
contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass.
What
is before us today is real, and it is compelling.
So
I also want to underscore that while investigators are gathering additional
evidence on the ground, our understanding of what has already happened in Syria
is grounded in facts, informed by conscience and guided by common sense. The
reported number of victims, the reported symptoms of those who were killed or
injured, the firsthand accounts from humanitarian organizations on the ground,
like Doctors Without Borders and the Syria Human Rights Commission -- these all
strongly indicate that everything these images are already screaming at us is
real, that chemical weapons were used in Syria.
Moreover,
we know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons. We
know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets. We know
that the regime has been determined to clear the opposition from those very
places where the attacks took place. And with our own eyes, we have all of us
become witnesses.
We
have additional information about this attack, and that information is being
compiled and reviewed together with our partners, and we will provide that
information in the days ahead.
Our
sense of basic humanity is offended not only by this cowardly crime but also by
the cynical attempt to cover it up. At every turn, the Syrian regime has failed
to cooperate with the U.N. investigation, using it only to stall and to stymie
the important effort to bring to light what happened in Damascus in the dead of
night. And as Ban Ki-moon said last week, the U.N. investigation will not
determine who used these chemical weapons, only whether such weapons were used,
a judgment that is already clear to the world.
I
spoke on Thursday with Syrian Foreign Minister Muallem, and I made it very clear
to him that if the regime, as he argued, had nothing to hide, then their
response should be immediate: immediate transparency, immediate access, not
shelling. Their response needed to be unrestricted and immediate access.
Failure to permit that, I told him, would tell its own story.
Instead,
for five days the Syrian regime refused to allow the U.N. investigators access
to the site of the attack that would allegedly exonerate them. Instead, it
attacked the area further, shelling it and systematically destroying evidence.
That is not the behavior of a government that has nothing to hide. That is not
the action of a regime eager to prove to the world that it had not used
chemical weapons. In fact, the regime’s belated decision to allow access is too
late and is too late to be credible.
Today’s
reports of an attack on the U.N. investigators, together with the continued
shelling of these very neighborhoods, only further weakens the regime’s
credibility. At President Obama’s direction, I’ve spent many hours over the
last few days on the phone with foreign ministers and other leaders. The
administration is actively consulting with members of Congress, and we will
continue to have these conversations in the days ahead. President Obama has
also been in close touch with the leaders of our key allies, and the president
will be making an informed decision about how to respond to this indiscriminate
use of chemical weapons.
But
make no mistake: President Obama believes there must be accountability for
those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most
vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more
serious scrutiny.
Thank
you.