West urged to keep Syria distance

President Bashar Assad’s regime will not continue as it has done but the Western world must “get off our shoulders”, Syria’s deputy prime minister has said.

US secretary of state John Kerry says the UN general assembly should move swiftly to approve a US-Russia deal to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, saying that there is no time to argue with those who remain unconvinced that Syrian president Bashar Assad’s government carried out a chemical attack last month.

Speaking today at the US State Department, Mr Kerry did not mention Russian president Vladimir Putin, but his remarks were a clear attempt to rebut Mr Putin’s statement that Russia has strong ground to believe that Syrian rebels - not Assad – were responsible for the attack.