US Secretary of State John Kerry has declared that the only thing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could do to avoid a US military strike would be to hand over his entire arsenal of chemical weapons within the next week.

Renewing his country’s allegations that the dictator bombed his own people with weapons that have been outlawed by the international community for 100 years, Mr Kerry added that the regime “isn’t about to do that”.

As President Barack Obama’s right-hand man in convincing the US Congress that an intervention in the Middle East is necessary, the Secretary of State appeared alongside William Hague at the Foreign Office in the conclusion of a tour aimed at gathering European support.

Mr Kerry said that he appreciated the concerns of British protestors outside the press conference calling for the US to “keep [its] hands off Syria”. But he said a political solution could only be sought after a military campaign had suitably chastened the Assad government.

He said: “A resolution will not be found on the military battlefield but at the negotiating table. But we have to get to that table.

“We come to this with years of effort to try to bring the parties to the table and create a political solution. Our respected leaders made clear in St Petersburg that a strong international response is needed to stop Assad using chemical weapons against his own people again.”

Mr Kerry passionately refuted Mr Assad’s claims, to be aired in a CBS interview this evening, that there is no evidence his regime conducted the alleged chemical weapons attack in Damascus on 21 August.

“I just gave you real evidence of a chemical weapons attack,” he said. “I’m confident about the state of the evidence. Read the unclassified report on whitehouse.gov – what does he (Mr Assad) offer?

“This is a man who has just killed 1,000 of his own citizens. He sends Scud missiles into schools. This is a man without credibility.”

The Syrian leader has refused to either confirm or deny the existence of a reportedly enormous stockpile of chemical weapons at his government’s disposal, but Mr Kerry said the US knew Assad to have “a huge stock of these weapons, and these weapons remain”.

He said: “Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week - turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting (of it) but he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done.”

•Excerpted from The Independent, UK. Photo shows Kerry.

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