Russia and France on Tuesday admitted they still had differences over how to solve the Syrian conflict ahead of a debate in the U.N. Security Council over stripping the country of its chemical arsenal.

After meeting in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French counterpart Laurent Fabius said they had differing visions of how to proceed toward the common goal of a peaceful and chemical weapons-free Syria.

Russian investigators on Tuesday said 15 servicemen had been hospitalized after a fire during repairs on a nuclear-powered submarine in the Far East, with the vessel sustaining significant damage.

The Russian Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes in Russia, said it had opened a criminal probe into suspected abuse of authority over the fire on the Tomsk submarine in the Bolshoi Kamen shipyard in the Russian Far East.

U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden is living under guard at a secret location in Russia but is able to travel incognito and is expecting family visits, his Russian lawyer said in excerpts from a televised interview published Monday by Russian news agencies.

"No one is being told his place of residence. This is done on his request because we understand that the level of danger is quite high," Anatoly Kucherena told RT television in an interview, the Interfax news agency reported ahead of the broadcast.

President Barack Obama said Monday that a U.S. deal reached with Russia at the weekend had the potential to end the threat of Syria's chemical arsenal.

In his first on-camera response to the breakthrough, Obama cautioned that the deal to identify and destroy the weapons must be properly implemented and that "we are not there yet."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday warned that talks by some western countries on a tough United Nations resolution on Syria could wreck peace efforts, but said he was "convinced" the U.S. would adhere to the framework it drew up with Russia.

He spoke after Britain, France and the United States at a meeting in Paris agreed on the need for a "strong and binding" U.N. resolution on the transfer of Syria's chemical weapons to international control.

Britain, France and the United States on Monday agreed to step up their backing for rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The three powers also agreed at talks in Paris that Assad would face "serious consequences" if he fails to comply with a U.N. resolution setting out a timetable for the handover of Syria's chemical weapons to international control, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

A suicide bomber driving a car full of explosives killed three policemen in Russia's Chechnya region Monday as he tried to ram his car into a police station, officials said.

"Three policemen have died as a result of a blast by a suicide bomber," Chechnya's Interior Ministry said in a statement.

A Russian nuclear-powered submarine undergoing repairs at a Far East shipyard caught fire on Monday, but its reactor had long been shut off and posed no danger of radiation leaks, officials said.

The submarine Tomsk was being repaired at a shipyard near the city of Vladivostok when the fire broke out, the Defense Ministry said in a statement cited by Russian news agencies.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon will on Monday present a report on Syria's chemical weapons, increasing pressure on the Assad regime, as support grows for a U.S.-Russian initiative to avert war.

Ban will unveil the findings of a U.N. investigation team to the U.N. Security Council in New York at 11:15am (1515 GMT). He has already revealed that he expects the report to provide "overwhelming" confirmation that chemical arms were used in an attack near Damascus on August 21 in which hundreds died.

On the streets of Damascus, a U.S.-Russian deal on Syria's chemical weapons has brought relief and hope the end of the country's devastating 30-month conflict may be in sight.

On Sunday, as children's summer holidays drew to an end, the atmosphere was relaxed at the Garden of Liberty primary school in the upscale district of Abu Rummaneh.