"We don't believe it [Assad’s government] has any legitimacy, but others do," Toner stated on Friday. "He [Assad] is not a legitimate leader for his people… He is deluded if he thinks there's a military solution to the conflict in Syria."
Toner was responding to an interview Assad gave to the French news agency Agence-France Presse (AFP) published earlier on Friday in which the Syrian leader said he intended to retake the whole country from rebel forces.
Toner was also speaking a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov led a meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in Munich to agree on trying to establish a ceasefire between the Syrian government and opposition forces within a week.
