Trump advisers: U.S. seeks to fight IS and oust Syria's Assad

Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) nations are meeting in Italy on Monday, eager to hear whether Washington is now committed to overthrowing Assad.

A USA military spokesman says the US has taken extra defensive precautions in Syria in anticipation of possible retaliation against American forces for last week's cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base.

Assad "may think he has the same option he took in September 2013: set the chemicals to the side and return to barrel bombs, gravity bombs, artillery shells, missiles, and mortar rounds against civilians in their homes, hospitals, marketplaces, and schools", Hof said in a post on the Atlantic Council's website.

It said the Syrian planes were in the vicinity of Khan Sheikhoun about 20 minutes before the attack and left shortly afterward. When that group announced in June 2014 that the program to eliminate the stockpiles had been completed, Secretary of State John Kerry lauded the result using a subtle caveat: "With this step, 100 percent of the declared chemicals are out of war-torn Syria".

A spokesperson for Russian Federation said only six Syrian Air Force MiG-23s, and a few buildings, were destroyed, with only 23 of the missiles reaching the Shayrat airbase. "Indeed, the business of the Syrian people [is] to elect their own leader, be it Assad or somebody else".

Tillerson also spoke by phone with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose government insists Assad should play no role in Syria's future.

"And our hope is Bashar al-Assad will not be part of that future", he said, without explicitly calling for Assad's removal.

"Now is the right moment to talk about how we can push for a peace process in Syria within the global community - with Russian Federation, with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, with Europe, with the United States", he said as he arrived. But he said the distinction "doesn't much matter to the dead". "We can't let this happen again".

Russian Federation is a staunch backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad and has been waging an air campaign in support of his forces since 2015. Trump chose to punish the Assad regime by launching 59 missiles from U.S. ships in Mediterranean Sea against a Syrian air base and inflicted considerable damage.

"We have information from various sources that such provocations - I can not call them otherwise - are being prepared in other regions of Syria, including in the southern outskirts of Damascus, where they are again planning to throw some kind of substance and accuse Syrian official authorities of using it", Mr Putin said at a televised press conference.

He did not offer any proof for that assertion.

Washington's retaliation was slammed by Iran and North Korea and put it on a direct diplomatic collision course with Moscow, where Tillerson heads on Tuesday for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

It also said that Trump thanked for the support given by the United Kingdom after the missile strikes against Assad regime.

But multiple White House officials quickly clarified Spicer's remarks after the briefing, implying that the press secretary had misspoken.

But if you look at diplomacy versus military action, the military action destroyed an airfield for a few hours.

OBAMA: "I think it was important for me as president of the United States to send a message that in fact there is something different about chemical weapons", he told the CBS program when asked about criticism of his decision not to follow through with airstrikes he had threatened. So, Trump's pro-Russianness is a media image actively maintained by Russian Federation both on the domestic arena and internationally. And it sounds like Russian Federation still wants to be discussing this chemical weapons attack. Aides later clarified that this "did not signal a change in Administration policy".

But the official said the presence of the surveillance drone over the hospital couldn't have been a coincidence, and that Russian Federation must have known the chemical weapons attack was coming and that victims were seeking treatment. "How is it possible that their forces were located with the Syrian forces that planned, prepared and carried out this chemical weapons attack at the same installation, and did not have foreknowledge?"

"It has been identified that sarin gas was used", Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag said on Tuesday, quoted by state-run news agency Anadolu, after analysis of blood and urine samples of the casualties from the attack in Idlib province who were brought to Turkey.