President Obama indicated a strike would "absolutely" be on hold if Assad embraced a plan to give up his chemical weapons Monday in an ABC "World News Tonight" interview with Diane Sawyer:
DIANE SAWYER: If Bashar al-Assad used control of his chemical weapons to international authority, are we back from the brink? Is military strike on pause?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Absolutely. If, in fact, that happened. I don't think that we would have gotten to this point unless we had maintained a credible possibility of a military strike and I don't think now is the time for us to let up on that. I want to make sure that that norm against use of chemical weapons is maintained. That's in our national security interest. If we can do that without a military strike, that's overwhelmingly my preference. Now the key is can we see is there a sense of urgency.
DIANE SAWYER: Urgency meaning a week, a month?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: This is one of the situations where the stakes are high but they're long term. They're not immediate but they're serious. I don't anticipate that you would see a succession of votes this week or any time in the immediate future and so I think there will be time during the course of the debates here in the United States for the international community, the Russians, the Syrians to see if we can resolve this.