Obama says Assad needs to leave for peace in Syria

U.S. President Barack Obama reiterated his position that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad needs to step down in order to end the conflict in the war-torn country.

"I think that Assad is going to have to leave in order for the country to stop the bloodletting and for all the parties involved to be able to move forward in a nonsectarian way," Obama said at the year-end press conference at the White House. "He has lost legitimacy in the eyes of a large majority of the country."

Obama said finding a political transition that maintains the Syrian state and initiating a cease-fire allow all the parties to focus on the primary mission of destroying the Islamic State and its allies in the region.

In an interview with MSNBC Friday, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby also reaffirmed that nothing has changed about the view of the U.S. and Secretary of State John Kerry that Assad has to go.

"We want to get to a government in Syria that's responsive and responsible to the Syrian people," Kirby said. "Obviously that can't include Bashar al-Assad as he continues to barrel bomb his own people."

UN Security Council convened a meeting Friday afternoon and adopted a resolution endorsing an international roadmap for a Syrian-led political transition in order to end the country's conflict, which calls for Syrian peace talks to begin in early January.

Earlier in the day, a new round of Syria international talks started at a hotel in New York City in a bid to promote the efforts for a political solution to the Syrian crisis, which broke out in March 2011. Endit