Administration officials indicated that the USA approach in Syria, which included air cover for groups battling Islamic State forces and hundreds of ground troops training and supporting them, was not expanding.
On Friday, the United States ambassador to the UK, Nikki Haley, said Assad's government "must never use chemical weapons again, ever".
Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, Haley said that "in no way do we see peace in that area with Assad as the head of the Syrian government". "It also makes good sense before we commit our military and our men and women in uniform to any sort of conflict". The U.S. and others have said that Russian Federation bears responsibility for the deaths of civilians at the hands of Assad given Moscow's role in guaranteeing the 2013 deal in which Assad was supposed to have given up his chemical weapons arsenal.
Tillerson is arriving at a fragile point in US-Russia relations, where he will have to confront the Kremlin's anger over the missile strikes in Syria along with suspicion at home that Moscow may have been complicit in the Syrian government's chemical weapons attack. "But neither regime change nor a full-on, unauthorized war against Syria is what we should be doing", Kaine said.
"Once the ISIS threat has been reduced or eliminated", Tillerson said, "I think we can turn our attention directly to stabilizing the situation in Syria".
McMaster said Sunday that the United States should "appeal rationally to Russia" and said that the U.S.
He stopped short of accusing Russian Federation of being directly involved in the planning or execution of the attack, saying he had not seen "any hard evidence" to suggest the nation was an accomplice to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
"There are too many variables, too many unknowns", he said, among them the expectation among US allies, including Saudi Arabia, that Trump should emphasize getting rid of Assad over defeating the Islamic State. The Republican criticized calls by his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, for the establishment of a no-fly zone and "safe zones" to protect noncombatants.
Moscow even interfered in the election in a bid to help Mr. Trump by hacking Democratic Party servers and releasing embarrassing e-mails - leading to persistent questions about contacts between members of Mr. Trump's circle and the Russian administration.
Tillerson on Sunday blamed Russian Federation for enabling the poison gas attack by failing to follow through on a 2013 agreement to secure and destroy chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria.
Reports of Trump White House Shake-Up Are 'BS' - But Something's Going On
Bannon and Kushner sat down to bury the hatchet this week in Mar-a-Lago, Politico reports, but it is unclear what came of the meeting.
Russian Federation is the Syrian government's main ally, and helped facilitate a 2013 agreement to destroy Syria's chemical arsenal.
Britain's defence secretary, Michael Fallon, on Sunday criticised Russia's support of Assad, describing the chemical attack as a war crime that happened "on their watch".
In Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the USA missile strike was a "a strategic error, and a repeat of the mistakes of the past", the state news agency IRNA reported.
It will be their first face-to-face encounter since United States cruise missiles slammed into a Syrian air base early on Friday Damascus time in retaliation for a suspected sarin gas attack on April 4 that killed at least 87 civilians in the rebel-held Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun.
Syrian Deputy UN Ambassador Mounzer Mounzer denied the country's use of chemical weapons, stating at the UN special session that Syria "would never use such weapons in any of its operations against armed terrorist groups."
"We're calling (Russia and Iran) out", Haley told "State of the Union" anchor Jake Tapper.
After denouncing Assad and tacitly supporting moderate rebels, the USA and other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries declined to send ground troops to assist in the Syrian conflict.
Russia's failures to rid Syria of weapons stockpiles "has led to the killing of more children and innocents", he said.
Days after Trump launched 59 tomahawk missiles at Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's airbase, the administration sent the big guns out onto the Sunday morning talk shows to defend and explain Trump's action.
"And Secretary (of State Rex) Tillerson basically saying the same thing after kind of contradicting himself and then saying the same thing argues vigorously for a plan and a strategy", McCain added. Assad's eventual fate, he said, "is something that we will be working [on] with allies and others in the coalition".
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