In a White House press briefing Thursday with visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President Barack Obama reiterated his calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down but offered no new details on the administration's approach to hastening ...

Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed optimism Wednesday that the peace talks on the Syrian conflict they're organizing will be successful. After a meeting with Lavrov in Sweden, Kerry said, "Both of ...

During a visit to Russia last week Secretary of State John Kerry announced that Russia would participate in a conference dedicated to the issue of Syria. Russia is among Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's staunchest international allies and has regularly

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced legislation that would significantly increase the U.S.'s involvement in the Syrian conflict. The Syria Stabilization Act of 2013 has five components: the authority to provide weapons, training, and non-lethal supplies to ...

General Salim Idris, the top commander of the Free Syrian Army, is urging President Obama to intervene in the country's conflict and help defeat Assad's army after American officials confirmed last week the use of chemical weapons ...

King Abdullah II of Jordan visited Washington this week, meeting with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and members of Congress. During their meeting on Friday, President Obama congratulated the king on his recent economic and political reforms ...

The State Department's 2012 Human Rights Report on Syria noted a number of human rights problems, the most significant of which were "the regime’s massive, countrywide attacks and strategic use of citizen killings to intimidate and control; specific ...

The White House today established that the U.S. Government now believes with "varying degrees of confidence" the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition. However, the Obama Administration stated that, given the ...

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani has begun his official visit to Washington, where he will hold talks with President Barack Obama and U.S. officials. On the occasion, Karen DeYoung writes that President Obama will "ensure ...

The State Department released the 2012 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. These reports provide detailed assessments of the status of human rights around the world. Uzra Zeya, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor,

Representative Eliot Engel (D-NY) introduced on Monday the Free Syria Act of 2013, a bill to improve humanitarian assistance to Syria, deliver non-lethal security assistance to the Syrian opposition, and provide post-Assad Syria transition, reconstruction and stabilization assistance.  It ...

In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated that "The United States has not 'lost' Iraq." He described a "strong partnership" with the U.S. "on political, security and economic levels," and noted that "Iraq is not ...

Secretary of State John Kerry announced today that he will meet with the Syrian opposition in London later this week. The list of attendees from the opposition is not yet finalized. Speaking as he departed Israel, Kerry 

Fearing that violence from the Syria conflict will spill into neighboring countries, the Obama administration and the Kingdom of Jordan have accelerated training efforts for Syrian opposition fighters. Aimed at creating "buffer zones" along Syria's southern borders, the effort will ...

The Syrian National Coalition (SNC) took Syria's seat the Arab League's Tuesday summit. Qatar's emir, who chairs the summit, formally invited the SNC to assume the seat in place of President Bashar al-Assad's government, which the League suspended ...