(MCT) — BEIRUT — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton indicated Wednesday that Washington is as concerned about Syria’s chemical weapons falling into the hands of Syrian rebels as it is about the possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad may decide to deploy them.

“Our concerns are that an increasingly desperate Assad regime might turn to chemical weapons, or might lose control of them to one of the many groups that are now operating within Syria,” Clinton told reporters at the end of two days of NATO ministerial meetings in Brussels. “We have sent an unmistakable message that this would cross a red line and those responsible would be held to account.”