McCain, Graham criticize Syria deal

The two US Republican senators who support foreign-backed militants fighting the Syrian government have criticized a US-Russian deal aimed at destroying Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.

According to AP, Arizona’s John McCain and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham said in a statement released on Saturday that the agreement was “an act of provocative weakness” by America, arguing that it would not resolve the Syrian crisis.
The statement also said that the deal would give Syrian President Bashar al-Assad time “to delay and deceive” while the country’s crisis continued. The statement said “It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama administration is being led into it by Bashar Assad and Russian president Vladimir Putin,”.
The US government blamed the Syrian government for an alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus last month against militants. President Assad strongly denied the allegation and said earlier this week that he would welcome a Russian initiative to surrender his government’s chemical weapons.