Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
, edging away from comments made by Secretary of State John F.
I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a
lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
, and it cast doubt on any immediate prospects for third-party talks to resolve Syria's civil war.
Kerry's apparent suggestion in a CBS television interview on Sunday that there could be a place for Assad in efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict drew swift criticism from European and Arab allies.
Seeking to calm the diplomatic storm, State Department and White House officials sought to clarify Kerry's remarks and show that Washington's position on Assad had not softened.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki
...a valley girl who woke up one morning and found she was spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State...
said that while the United States accepted the need for representatives of Assad's government to participate in any negotiations, "it would not be and would never be - and it wasn't what Secretary Kerry was intending to imply - that that would be Assad himself."
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