ANKARA
The position of the United States is clear and unchanged about Syria, the U.S. Embassy in Turkey said Tuesday.
"The only solution to the crisis in Syria is a political settlement in keeping with Geneva principles and reaching that political settlement will involve negotiation at some point with representatives of the regime," the embassy said via its official Twitter account in both English and Turkish.
The embassy also tweeted a reminder of U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki's comments on March 16, 2015 where she said that "there’s no future for Assad in Syria. Somebody who’s killed tens of thousands of his own people does not have legitimacy to have a role in the future of the country."
On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had told CBS News that the U.S. would "have to negotiate in the end" with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"What we're pushing for is to get him to come and do that and it may require that there be increased pressure on him of various kinds in order to do that," Kerry said.
Turkey had opposed Kerry's suggestion of talks with Assad.
"What is there to negotiate with Assad?” Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said March 16. "His regime killed more than 200,000 people and used chemical weapons."
