President Barack Obama said in an interview that aired Friday that the situation in Syria is “clearly an event of grave concern.”
Asked by “New Day” host Chris Cuomo about Syrian anti-government activists’ claims that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime killed hundreds of citizens in a chemical weapons attack, Obama called the situation “troublesome.”
“I can say that unlike some of the evidence that we were trying to get earlier that led to a U.N. investigator going into Syria, what we’ve seen indicates that this is clearly a big event of grave concern,” he said.
Obama defended his administration’s abstention from intervening in the Syrian conflict, cautioning that the U.S. must act according to the rule of international law and keep in mind the continuing war in Afghanistan’s cost.
“I think it is fair to say that, as difficult as the problem is, this is something that is going to require America’s attention and hopefully the entire international community’s attention,” he added.
Watch the segment below, courtesy of CNN:
