Al-Monitor’s Congress Pulse got off to a fast start this week, as Julian Pecquet broke the news on March 14 about a new resolution sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward Royce, R-Calif., and ranking member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., calling on the Obama administration to develop a new US strategy for Syria in 60 days and withdraw recognition of the Syrian government, “unless and until the [Bashar al-] Assad regime and its supporting militias discontinue their barbaric slaughter, systematic starvation and other grave human rights abuses, and are granted full and unfettered access for deliveries of humanitarian assistance, even as other negotiations with Assad’s regime may continue.”
The introduction of the resolution, which even if it passed in its current form would not be binding on the Obama administration, came on the same day as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the Syrian political process as being “in crisis.”