Doesn’t the State Department coordinate the talking points with the White House? Update to this previous story.
Via CNS News
The State Department scrambled Sunday to give assurances that comments by Secretary of State John Kerry did not indicate a shift in the administration’s view of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his future.
Remarks in a CBS News interview in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt were interpreted by some as signaling a softening of the long expressed stance that, given regime abuses, the huge death toll and humanitarian suffering resulting from the Syrian civil war, there can be no future role for Assad.
Reiterating the view that the conflict can only end with a political solution, Kerry spoke of efforts to “re-ignite a diplomatic outcome.”
“To get the Assad regime to negotiate, we’re going to have to make it clear to him that there is a determination by everybody to seek that political outcome and change his calculation about negotiating.”[…]
Kerry spokeswoman Marie Harf, traveling with the secretary, used her Twitter feed to counter that interpretation.
She said Kerry had merely “repeated long-standing policy that we need negotiated process w/regime at table – did not say we wld negotiate directly w/Assad.”
“Policy remains same & is clear: there’s no future for Assad in Syria & we say so all the time …” she tweeted.
Harf drew attention to a March 12 statement by U.S. special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein, in which he said that “Assad’s desperation to cling to power through daily terror reminds us all that he has long lost legitimacy and he must give way for a real political transition.”
Kerry’s comments in Egypt came hours before he headed to Switzerland for the latest round of talks with his Iranian counterpart ahead of an end-March deadline for a deal on its nuclear program.