The United States does not plan to adopt a new approach to stopping the bloodshed in Syria, believing that diplomatic efforts will yet bear fruit, a top White House adviser said Wednesday.
"We're still on Plan A," Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, told the US Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar. "We feel we are making progress" on a deal with Russia to remove support from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, he said. "But this is us not wanting to trumpet policy success" before a deal is complete.
"The Assad regime has lost its legitimacy to lead. We don't believe it's in the Russians' interest to be associated with the Assad regime." McDonough did not specify the terms of a prospective deal with Moscow.
Calls for the United States and its allies to intervene in Syria intensified after a massacre Friday in which Assad's forces killed 108 people, including dozens of children, mostly in executions carried out by gunmen moving home to home in the town of Houla.
"This weekend's killings are grisly and horrific, but sadly unsurprising given [Assad's] conduct over the last months," McDonough said.
McDonough acknowledged frustration with the White House record in the three years since President Barack Obama promised greater friendship for the Muslim world in a 2009 address in Cairo.
"I know there are some in the region and even in this room who feel the promise of the president's Cairo speech has yet to be fulfilled," McDonough said. "I share that view. But as the president said, [we knew it would take years]. So much progress has been made in the last three years, but there is much, much to be done."
McDonough said the outcome of the first round of the Egyptian presidential election was "a rather suprising result". The runoff election will pit a candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood against a candidate tied to the regime of Hosni Mubarak.
"The choice in Egypt's presidential elections is for Egyptians alone," McDonough said. "We are committed to working with whoever" wins.
