WASHINGTON — Last year’s agreement to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons left President Bashar Assad in a strengthened position, and there appears little chance rebels will soon force him from power, the US intelligence chief told Congress on Tuesday.
“The prospects are right now that [Assad] is actually in a strengthened position than when we discussed this last year, by virtue of his agreement to remove the chemical weapons, as slow as that process has been,” said James Clapper, director of national intelligence.
Clapper, testifying before a US House of Representatives intelligence committee hearing, did not specify why last September’s agreement on chemical arms had boosted Assad’s position.
But before the pact, worked out by the United States and Russia, the Obama administration had appeared on the verge of launching military strikes against Syria in reprisal for a poison gas attack in the Damascus suburbs which killed hundreds.
President Barack Obama in August 2011 called on the Syrian president to give up power following the lethal suppression of anti-government protests by Assad’s security forces.
Clapper said Assad’s government is likely to remain in power, absent a diplomatic agreement for a new transitional government, which most observers consider a long shot.
“I foresee kind of more of the same, sort of a perpetual state of a stalemate where ... neither the regime nor the opposition can prevail,” he told the House intelligence committee.
Reuters reported last week that Syria has given up less than 5 per cent of its chemical weapons arsenal and will miss this week’s deadline to send all toxic agents abroad for destruction.
Clapper said the weapons removal was occurring at a “slow pace”, and that two shipments totalling about 53 metric tonnes had left Syria so far.
Russia, Syria’s ally, said on Tuesday that Damascus would soon ship more toxic agents abroad for destruction.
