Lavrov Says Syria Arms Handover Makes Strike 'Unnecessary', Kerry Rejects Assad Timetable
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday that Syria handing over chemical weapons and joining the treaty banning them would make U.S. strikes against the country "unnecessary," as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry rejected a 30-day timetable suggested by Syrian President Bashar Assad to begin submitting data on his chemical arsenal.
Lavrov told journalists ahead of talks with Kerry that their goal is to agree how to "solve once and for all the problem of chemical weapons in Syria" through the country's joining of the chemical weapons convention.
"The solution of this problem makes unnecessary any strikes on Syria, and I am sure that our American partners... are strongly in favor of a peaceful way to regulate chemical weapons in Syria," Lavrov said, speaking alongside Kerry in Geneva.
The United Nations earlier said that Syria has formally applied to join the convention banning chemical arms, sending relevant documents.
"We will have to see, together with experts... what further actions to take so that this process is not delayed and is proceeding in accordance with the strict rules of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons," Lavrov said.
He added that the talks also give a chance to discuss the potential international Geneva conference to "take the current situation out of the stage of military confrontation" and bring the warring sides together for negotiations on a transitional government.
"That is our common goal and I hope that work today and tomorrow... will help get closer to it," he said.
For his part, Kerry said Washington is not prepared to trust the word of the Syrian regime alone that it will rid itself of chemical weapons.
"The words of the Syrian regime in our judgment are simply not enough, which is why we've come here in order to work with the Russians," Kerry told reporters in Geneva ahead of the high-stakes talks with Lavrov.
He warned it was also up to Russians to show that they could "deliver on the promise of the moment" after Moscow proposed a plan earlier this week to eliminate Syria's deadly weapons stock.
But Kerry highlighted that the U.S. and Russia still disagreed on who carried out a suspected sarin gas attack near Damascus last month, which Washington says killed 1,400 people.
The attack came in the midst of a brutal civil war which began as a popular uprising to topple Assad, and which is said to have cost some 110,000 lives in about two and a half years.
"The Russian delegation has put some ideas forward and we're grateful for that. We respect it. And we have prepared our own principles that any plan to accomplish this needs to encompass," Kerry stressed, before a room packed with reporters from around the world.
"Expectations are high. They are high for the United States, perhaps even more so for Russia to deliver on the promise of this moment. This is not a game," he said.
Any deal to bring Syria's chemical weapons stockpile under international control "has to be credible. It has to be timely and implemented in a timely fashion," he said.
Kerry and Lavrov, who have both brought a team of top-level weapons experts with them to pore over the details of the Russian plan, will be making a posh Geneva hotel their operating base until Saturday for the closed-door talks.
The top U.S. diplomat told Lavrov that the United States was "serious as you are, engaging in substantive meaningful negotiations".
"Despite how difficult this is, with the collaboration of our experts, and only with the compliance from the Assad regime, we do believe there is a way to get this done," he said.
"Together we will test the Assad regime's commitment to follow through on its promises."
Pending the talks, U.S. President Barack Obama has put on hold plans for limited military strikes against the Syrian regime to disable its chemical weapons capability.
Lavrov told Kerry, speaking through a translator, that "I hope we will achieve all the successes."
But Kerry quipped: "You want me to take your word for it? It's a little early for that."
12 September 2013, 22:08
79
As I have been saying on numerous occasions in the past days..... RU/US are in this together. It was planned in August.....
Nothing is coincidental......
It's a win-win for Obama and Putin As well as for Israel... Because Bashar's destitution has been put in motion. The rebels would be far more dangerous for the Hebrews than Bashar and father who gifted the Jewish state a huge chunk of land known as Golan heights.
12 September 2013, 23:23
75
Not bad because this time he burried himself without anyone's help. His father's Baathist advisors are old crocodiles.... completely disconnected from the reality of the 21 century.....
It's a bye bye Bachar.
12 September 2013, 22:16
54
Getting kinda bored of all these games of appeasement and whitewashing on both sides going nowhere and nowhere fast. Wake me up when September ends, maybe?
12 September 2013, 22:54
32
"who engages in explicit homosexual acts to appease his lord Lucifer."
... what on earth? I agree with the warmongering, but this is just, well, absurd.
12 September 2013, 23:09
65
Completely. The regime change is in motion. The upcoming one will have zero chemical weapons at its disposal... the geneva convention will be signed... the hebrews will be happy.... Palestine and Israel will get closer and we will be able to thank the Ruskies and Americans for this. Of course, the half million palestinians in Lebanon will remain..... where they are. One can feel that Israel is no longer a priority to the Arab World... economy is what matter. And as long as the lebanese jarheads (terroristas) don't focus on the country's economy, Lebanon will remain stagnant.... and we'll have M8 tontos whining on Naharnet Israel this, Israel that....
12 September 2013, 23:28
42
There's a way to recover lost messages/webpages.... for personal use. but we r not gona help them! :)
13 September 2013, 00:29
24
Thank you! Thank you! the US is governed by devil worshipers. That explains it all.
Obama has apparently 666 tattooed on his skull and Kerry is wearing a mask. In reality he comes from another dimension and he is actually a Klingon spy.
Oh yes. Hollande is part of a masochistic freemason brotherhood who likes to dress like little red riding hood while ordering attacks on Mali.
Thank you for the great insight! You add real value to our discussions.
13 September 2013, 00:33
24
The only 2 humans left on the planet are Ali Khamanei and Bashar Assad. They are great strategist and will save the planet from the devil wears Obama and Merry Kerry.
Assad is gazing and blowing up all the critters and their progenies in Syria and Khamanei is in direct communication with the sky and is preparing an army of angels to fight the final apocalypse.
13 September 2013, 00:48
21
Heyo, Klingon are good honorable people!
But seriously though, if you take freemasonry and such as seriously as it's portrayed then it's pretty worrying, though it's mostly just an knackered old-men's drinking club (and evading taxes ahemahem).
13 September 2013, 00:40
34
Yes of course the great conspirators have taken over the earth and they are distributing coke and hasish to their followers. They are instructing them to delete your accounts and posts.
You are exposing us all.
Meanwhile, Assad the chosen one is doing the great cleansing on behalf of humanity and has already managed to kill 100,000 gremlins disguising themselves as Syrian men, women and children.
13 September 2013, 00:54
22
Actually, I find this point in particular quite fascinating in that people don't usually put much thought into it.
Government troops make up some 50,000 of that figure. Opposition fighters make up 31,000 to 87000. So bystander/civilian death accounts for some 19,000 people if you take the lowest values for dead combatants and assume 100,000 people dead. Idk.
13 September 2013, 01:01
33
Sorry I am too busy snorting with my buddy Ayman Zawahiri...
13 September 2013, 01:07
22
The figures are accurate. I don't think anyone's saying he/his forces killed 100,000 people, though I think people's perseverate inclination in using the figure as a doing of Al-Assad is implied only indirectly, in that he was the reason of this war.
13 September 2013, 01:08
44
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/01/syria-death-toll_n_3851982.html
Here you go...40,000 civilians dead...Assad is fully responsible for this disaster. All he has to do is resign.
13 September 2013, 01:21
22
Machia, I see, but you have to consider the way the SOHR assesses things; it's really muddy waters.
For one thing, civilians taking up arms are considered, well, not surprisingly, in the category of civilians. So 'civilian' deaths aren't made purely of unarmed bystanders/collateral damage as is the usual feel of it. So the number includes active Syrian fighters. The numbers also include foreign fighters and foreign 'civilians' which again I don't know why is projected on the Syrian civil war's body count instead of being considered in a separate category since they're not Syrian, and that includes thousands of people.
Not an Al-Assad apologist and far from it, but I value fairness and balance more than anything else regarding such things, and the SOHR doesn't quite fit the bill. This is my main problem with the SOHR; it's not objective, its sources are biased mostly, and whatever the rebels (and doctors et. al) say and in whatever way, is taken as fact.
13 September 2013, 01:26
22
(at least during the first year, civilians that had taken up arms after the uprising started, as in, new recruits)
13 September 2013, 01:24
35
Teshrine is the Assad regime's newspaper and novosti is the Russian news agency...you still have a lot to learn...happy giving you lessons
13 September 2013, 01:31
45
Assad is responsible...he was the head of a totalitarian state. His bloody father gave him Syria and Lebanon on a silver platter and he managed to loose them. Moreover he is one of the greatest war criminals in the 21st century.
He is a daddy's boy from hell.
13 September 2013, 01:37
44
this is how europeans see about Syria:
Un dictateur pourri supporte par une nation mafieuse essayent d'empecher une bande d'extremistes enrages de prendre leur place. Vu sous cet angle... le monde occidental n'a rien a faire dans cette petaudiere.
bonne nuit les petits
13 September 2013, 02:07
22
How true is irrelevant endless. They've never been here... and they are usually racists (even those who vote socialism). There's truth in their POV, wars are ugly.... to win, you need to kill... which is incompatible with a modern society. Just compare the 'Revolution de Velours' in '89 with Syria.... or even the Romanian one which was bloody (around 1000 casualties).
Arabs are exactly 100 years behind. We are living what Europe experienced in the early 1900s when their monarchies collapsed one after the others -Portugal 1910, Russia 1917, Germany + Austria + Poland 1918... and many other smaller kingdoms were affected as well. Many survived but became protocolar monarchs.... literally stripped of their powers.
13 September 2013, 02:22
22
How True? well, as they say, Vox Populi vox Dei. There's a mafia (to quote the one I copy/pasted) and they are holding onto their power/privileges (since 1963!) Sure it's going to get bloody and barbaric.... look at Russia, the first revolution in 1905... they were defeated by the Regime but they eventually prevailed 12 years later.
Look at the American Revolution. France and Russia (many ignore this) helped the Americans against the British ruler and again during the american civil war.... So, they did it two centuries ago. nothing comes for free, alliances must benefit both but I don't see why USA or Europe shouldn't help overthrow Bachar. Even if they don't, he'll fall, but it'll take longer. Rest assured, Gulf Monarchs will meet the same fate (or the fate of the surviving european monarchies) once their resources will no longer suffice to feed their citizens. For now, they are doing ok with the exception of Bahrain.
13 September 2013, 02:32
22
So, from a moral point of view, les occidentaux, should help the FSA..... and even if the Nousra terrorists control some small cities, they'll get crushed by the people, because if I've learned something from my history classes, it's that nothing lasts forever!
yalla bonne nuit, it's past 1AM
13 September 2013, 01:43
33
Now you're talking...anyone from the Syrian army. He will go to the table of negotiations and hopefully form a government with the secular opposition. They will have legitimacy and int'l support to fight the takfiris and end this civil war and head towards a freer Syria devoid of the Assad boys and their relatives.
13 September 2013, 04:00
51
Russia and America both can stay the hell away from our blessed land.
