GENEVA/DUBAI: US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met the United Nations special envoy on Syria in Geneva on Friday as they worked on a deal that could avert US military action.
Lakhdar Brahimi, who acts for both the world body and the Arab League, met Kerry and Lavrov together. He has been trying to broker a political solution to the Syrian civil war. The two powers are trying to flesh out Moscow’s plan to dispose of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons.
Damascus formally applied to join a global poison gas ban – a move welcomed on Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He called it “an important step towards the resolution of the Syrian crisis” and added: “This confirms the serious intention of our Syrian partners to follow this path.”
China, too, hailed Assad’s decision.
But Kerry underscored that Washington could still attack if it was not satisfied: “This is not a game,” he said on Thursday.
The talks were part of a diplomatic push that prompted President Barack Obama to put on hold plans for US air strikes in response to a chemical weapons attack on civilians in rebel-held suburbs of Damascus on August 21.
The United States and its allies say Assad’s forces carried out the attack with sarin nerve gas, killing more than 1,400 people. Putin and Assad have blamed rebel forces.
The United Nations said it received a document from Syria on joining the global anti-chemical weapons treaty, a move Assad promised as part of a deal to avoid US air strikes.
The move would end Syria’s status as one of only seven nations outside the 1997 international convention that outlaws stockpiling chemical weapons. Other holdouts include neighbours Egypt and Israel, as well as North Korea.
The United States immediately warned Syria against stalling tactics to avoid military strikes. Assad told Russian state television in an interview broadcast yesterday that he would finalise plans to abandon his chemical arsenal only when the United States stops threatening to attack him.
Kerry expressed some optimism about the talks in Geneva, saying, “We do believe there is a way to get this done” and that the United States was “grateful” for ideas from Russia.
But he and Lavrov differed sharply on US military threats.
“We proceed from the fact that the solution of this problem will make unnecessary any strike on the Syrian Arab Republic,” Lavrov said during the appearance with Kerry.
Along with other world powers, Moscow and Washington see the instability in Syria as fuelling wider security threats, but differ sharply on how to respond. Western powers say that Assad is a tyrant who should be overthrown. Russia, like Assad, highlights the presence in rebel ranks of Islamist militants.
In an audio recording released a day after the 12th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri referred to Islamist fighters in Syria among other battlegrounds as he urged supporters to carry out attacks in the United States to “bleed America economically”.
“As we defeated it in the gang warfare in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan, so we should follow it with …war on its own land,” Zawahri said. “These disparate strikes can be done by one brother or a few of the brothers.”
Putin’s Russia has been Assad’s most powerful backer during the civil war, which has killed more than 100,000 people since 2011, delivering arms and – with China – blocking three UN resolutions meant to pressure Assad.
“President Obama has made clear that should diplomacy fail, force might be necessary to deter and degrade Assad’s capacity to deliver these weapons,” Kerry asserted.
“Only the credible threat of force – and the intervention of President Putin and Russia based on that – has brought the Assad regime to acknowledge for the first time that it even has chemical weapons and an arsenal, and that (it) is now prepared to relinquish it,” Kerry added.
Kerry said any agreement must be comprehensive, verifiable, credible and implemented in a “timely” way – “and finally, there ought to be consequences if it doesn’t take place.” Kerry called a peaceful resolution “clearly preferable” to military action.
A version of the Russian plan that leaked to the newspaper Kommersant described four stages: Syria would join the world body that enforces a chemical weapons ban, declare production and storage sites, invite inspectors, and then decide with the inspectors how and by whom stockpiles would be destroyed. (PTI)
‘Syrian forces executed 248 in two villages in May’
DAMASCUS: Syrian regime forces executed at least 248 people in the villages of Bayda and Banias earlier this year, Human Rights Watch said on Friday, calling for Damascus to be held accountable.
In a report, the New York-based rights group said it had compiled a list of the names of 248 people killed in the two villages in coastal Tartus province on May 2 and 3.
But it said the number was probably much higher, and called the deaths “one of the deadliest instances of mass summary executions since the start of the conflict in Syria”.
The report comes as the international community discusses a plan for Syria to turn over its chemical weapons, after an alleged chemical attack that killed hundreds of people on August 21.
HRW said the deaths in Bayda and Banias served as a reminder that other weapons were also being used in Syria’s conflict.
“While the world’s attention is on ensuring that Syria’s government can no longer use chemical weapons against its population, we shouldn’t forget that Syrian government forces have used conventional means to slaughter civilians,” HRW’s acting Middle East director Joe Stork said.
“Survivors told us devastating stories of how their unarmed relatives were mowed down in front of them by government and pro-government forces.”
The deaths were widely reported in May, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights NGO putting the final tolls at 162 dead in Bayda and 145 dead in Banias.
The group says at least 110,000 people have been killed since the conflict in Syria began in March 2011.
Earlier this week, UN investigators said forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad “have continued to conduct widespread attacks on the civilian population, committing murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance as crimes against humanity”. (Agencies)