WASHINGTON: US secretary of state John Kerry is seeking to ensure that a Russian proposal to secure Syria’s chemical weapons will be intrusive and enforceable enough to bolster a new diplomatic initiative to hold Syria to account for using the banned arms.

The hastily arranged trip comes as the White House tries to pin the success or failure of the diplomatic track on Russia’s willingness to take a tough line with its ally Syria. Syrian rebels, however, are disappointed at best in President Barack Obama’s decision to forgo a military strike in favour of an agreement to take access to chemical weapons away from President Bashar Assad.

CIA delivering weapons to rebels

At the same time, the CIA has begun delivering light weapons and other munitions to the rebels over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the state department of vehicles and other gear, The Washington Post reported late Wednesday.

The deliveries have lagged, the newspaper said, because of logistical challenges and US fears that any assistance could wind up in the hands of extremists. Some US lawmakers have chided the administration — which had, months ago, said that it would send aid — for not moving more quickly to help the rebels.

Obama also found opposition in Congress to putting on hold his request for authorization to punish Assad militarily for his government’s alleged role in a chemical attack on Damascus suburbs last month.

His Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, asserted in an opinion piece in The New York Times that a potential strike by the US would create more victims and could spread the conflict beyond Syria and unleash a new wave of terrorism.

In meetings planned for later on Thursday and again on Friday with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, Kerry will prod Moscow to put forward a credible and verifiable plan to inventory, quarantine and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stocks, according to US officials.

Kerry is accompanied by American chemical weapons experts to look at and possibly expand on Russian ideas for the complex task of safely dealing with the vast stockpiles in the midst of a brutal and unpredictable conflict. Russian technical experts will join Lavrov in the meetings.

“Our goal here is to test the seriousness of this proposal, to talk about the specifics of how this would get done, what are the mechanics of identifying, verifying, securing and ultimately destroying the chemical weapons,” state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said shortly before Kerry left Washington.

The US is hoping that an acceptable agreement with the Russians can be part of a binding new UN security council resolution being negotiated that would hold Syria accountable for using chemical weapons. Russia, however, has long opposed UN action on Syria, vetoed three earlier resolutions, blocked numerous, less severe condemnations and has not indicated it is willing to go along with one now. (Agencies)

Assad may benefit

BEIRUT: Washington and Moscow are taking applause for a possible diplomatic bargain to have Syria hand over its chemical arsenal.

Yet the ultimate victor could be President Bashar al-Assad. And, if past experience with international cooperation on Syria is repeated, the main losers may be other Syrians, of whom more than 100,000 have been killed and over 6 million made homeless since Assad cracked down on demands for democracy in 2011.

For all the talk of a deal that may ease a dilemma for Western leaders seeking a politically acceptable response to a poison gas attack on August 21, few Syrians see it as any solution to the greater crisis their nation faces.

Chemical weapons account for perhaps 2 per cent of deaths in the civil war; in the three weeks since toxins killed some 1,400 people near Damascus, according to U.S. officials, conventional bombs and bullets have killed more than twice that number.

Assad, who calls his enemies terrorists, grows in confidence as the threat of U.S. strikes fades and diplomacy affords him legitimacy. (Agencies)