The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. says the United States is looking at various solutions to bring about a political resolution to the civil war in Syria.

"What President Obama has instructed all of us to do is just look under every stone, look at every tool that we have in the toolbox and see what we can deploy so that we don't confront a choice between doing nothing on the one hand and sending in the Marines on the other," Samantha Power, the envoy, told NPR's Renee Montagne.

Her comments come as a U.N. Security Council report last week said both sides in the civil war had imperiled the lives of children. The report said more than 10,000 children had been killed in the fighting, and many more were subject to maiming and sexual violence.

"We are doing everything we can think of to try to mitigate the horrific suffering there, including stepping up the pressure on humanitarian access and so forth, but ... tremendous suffering goes on," she said. "And so we every day just push on, seek to push harder, and seek to enlist Russia in particular, which has been a patron of the regime, to try and secure the humanitarian access that is needed to try to evacuate those individuals who have been besieged in some cases for more than 600 days."

Her comments come just days after Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Secretary of State John Kerry told them in a private meeting that the Obama administration's policy toward Syria is failing.

You can listen to Renee's full interview with Power on Friday's Morning Edition.

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