Obama says hopes Putin will change position on Syria

US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he hoped that Russian President Vladimir Putin would change his position on Syria.          

"Do I hold out hope that Mr. Putin may change his position on some of these issues? I'm always hopeful, and I will continue to engage him," Obama said during a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt                     

Obama added that he had made appeals directly to Putin on Syria, but so far he had resisted efforts to achieve U.N. Security Council action.                      

Obama added that the credibility of the US Congress was on the line in the need to uphold a ban on chemical weapons and to respond to Syria's chemical weapons attack.                                     
"My credibility is not on the line. The international community's credibility is on the line," Obama said.             

"America and Congress' credibility is on the line, because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important," Obama added.        
              
On another note, Obama said the US was not spying on ordinary people's correspondence and phone calls, but its international intelligence gathering was targeted at specific areas of concern.                                               

"I can give assurances to the public in Europe and around the world that we are not going around snooping at people's emails or listening to their phone calls," Obama said.                                  
"What we try to do is to target, very specifically, areas of concern," he said, adding that such areas included counter-terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and cyber-security.                  


REUTERS