Baladi News Reuters
Reuters news agency quoted the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas as saying: "Germany and the United States agree on the need to do everything possible to prevent the use of chemical weapons in Syria," after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Maas said the meeting included intense discussions about the situation in Syria, with both sides keen to increase the pressure for a political solution, and wanted to work start as soon as possible on rewriting the Syrian constitution, Reuters added.
Germany also pledged to more strongly support Washington’s efforts in Syria, including through humanitarian aid, and in ensuring that chemical weapons were not used there, Maas told reporters after the meeting.
“We discussed how we can more strongly support the United States in their engagement in Syria. We now will concretise and operationalise that,” he said.
He said Pompeo understood the political debate in Germany about possible participation in any U.S.-led reliatory military strike in the event of a chemical weapons attack, and that parliament was unlikely to approve such a move.
A U.S. diplomat last week told Reuters that Washington will pursue “a strategy of isolation,” including sanctions, with its allies if Bashar al-Assad holds up a political process aimed at ending Syria’s seven-year war.