U.S. Department of State Office of the Spokesperson For Immediate Release April 6, 2017 Palm Beach, Florida Remarks Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
SECRETARY TILLERSON: Good evening, all. I particularly want to try to just give you a little bit of background on how we got to the statements by the President and the actions that were taken tonight.
As you’re well aware, Bashar al-Assad has carried out chemical attacks this past week on civilians, including women and children, and carried out attacks earlier this – last month, March 25th and 30th, in Hama province as well. We have a very high level of confidence that the attacks were carried out by aircraft under the direction of the Bashar al-Assad regime, and we also have very high confidence that the attacks involved the use of sarin nerve gas. At least the past three attacks, we have fairly high – we have high confidence on that.
I think it’s also clear that previous agreements that had been entered into pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 2118, as well as Annex A agreements that the Syrian Government themselves accepted back in 2013 whereby they would surrender their chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russian Government, and the U.S. and the Russian Government entered into agreements whereby Russia would locate these weapons, they would secure the weapons, and they would destroy the weapons, and that they would act as the guarantor that the weapons would no longer be present in Syria.
Clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment from 2013, so either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement.
I think the other thing that it’s important to recognize that as Assad has continued to use chemical weapons in these attacks with no response – no response from the international community – that he, in effect, is normalizing the use of chemical weapons, which may then be adopted by others. So it’s important that some action be taken on behalf of the international community to make clear that the use of chemical weapons continues to be a violation of international norms.
I think it’s also important to recognize, as I think everyone does, the chaotic circumstances that exist on the ground in Syria, with the presence of a battle underway to defeat ISIS, the presence of al-Qaida elements inside of Syria, and a civil war that is underway. So clearly, one of the existential threats we see on the ground in Syria is, if there are weapons of this nature available in Syria, the ability to secure those weapons and not have them fall into the hands of those who would bring those weapons to our shores to harm American citizens.
So there are a number of elements that, in our view, called for this action tonight, which we feel is appropriate. We feel that the strike itself was proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical weapons attack. And in carrying this out, we coordinated very carefully with our international partners in terms of communicating with them around the world, and I would tell you that the response from our allies as well – in Europe as well as in the region in the Middle East has been overwhelmingly supportive of the action we’ve taken.
# # #
