President Barack Obama on Tuesday called on the United Nations Security Council to pass a resultion enforcing an agreement reached by the U.S. and Russia that would dispose of Syria’s chemical weapons.
“Syria took the first step to agree to turn them over, and now there must be a strong security council resolution to verify that the regime is keeping its commitments and there must be consequences if they fail to do so,” Obama said at a U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. “If we cannot agree to do this, it will show that the United Nations is incapable of keeping even the most basic of international laws. If we succeed, it will send a powerful message that the weapons have no place in the 21st century and that this body means what it says.”