President Barack Obama speaks to the media after meetings at the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit at the Diriyah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on April 21. | AP Photo Obama acknowledges Syrian cease-fire 'may be breaking down'

President Barack Obama on Thursday acknowledged that the cease-fire in Syria appears to be crumbling.

“Right now, the cessation of hostilities is very fragile and may be breaking down, in part because of the Assad regime’s continuing attacks on areas where they perceive they have an advantage,” he said, speaking to reporters from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.


Obama, who spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, said he urged the Russian leader to hold the Syrian government accountable to maintaining the tentative cease-fire and said he has been communicating America’s options should the cessation of hostilities break down.

“None of the options are good,” he said. “It has been my view consistently that we have to get a political solution inside of Syria, and that all the external actors involved had to be committed to that, as well as actors inside of Syria. Certainly that’s what the Syrian people want.”

Obama said Syrians would like to go back to their everyday routines, such as returning to their homes, farming their land and sending their children to school, and warned against reaching a prolonged solution.

“The problem with any plan B that does not involve a political settlement is that it heeds more fighting, potentially for years,” Obama said. “And whoever comes out on top will be standing on top of a country that’s been devastated and will then take years to rebuild. So the sooner we can end fighting and resolve this in a political fashion, the better.”

Obama said Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime has killed Syrians and barrel bombed children but argued that that wasn’t the only reason Syria needs a new regime.

“It’s that it is hard to conceive of him being at the head of a government that would end the fighting because it was perceived as legitimate,” Obama said. “That’s where we have to work.”