When Secretary of State John Kerry took the floor at the United Nations on Wednesday to deliver a searing denunciation of the airstrike on an aid convoy headed for the Syrian city of Aleppo, President Barack Obama was crosstown, at his Manhattan hotel, preparing for a day of diplomacy that included Africa, Israel and Colombia — but, conspicuously, not Syria.
It was typical of the arm’s-length approach the President has taken toward the Syria conflict on the world stage in recent weeks.
At a summit meeting in China this month, he studiously avoided negotiating a cease-fire with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
At the UN, he scarcely mentioned Syria in a wide-ranging farewell address to the General Assembly.
Mr. Obama’s public distancing, White House officials insist, does not reflect a lack of concern. On the contrary, they say the president is desperate for Mr. Kerry to negotiate a viable agreement with Russia.
But as Mr. Obama’s presidency enters its final months, the negotiations with Russia have become a threadbare exercise.
This week, his frustration boiled over publicly. The situation in Syria “haunts me constantly,” the President said in an interview with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, published Thursday in Vanity Fair .
Mr. Obama’s skepticism appeared warranted when an aid convoy was hit by a warplane in Syria that U.S. officials believe was Russian. White House officials reacted harshly. Benjamin J. Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Adviser, said: “The question is whether or not we just walk away from the table completely at this point, or whether or not we do some more diplomacy and consultation to determine whether or not there is some path forward.”
Again, though, Mr. Obama left it to Mr. Kerry to reproach Mr. Lavrov at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. —The New York Times News Service
