Assad hails Russia; Kerry, Lavrov meet

Efforts to put Syrian chemical weapons under international control began on Thursday with top US and Russian diplomats meeting in Geneva to discuss the issue, even as Russia president Vladimir Putin made a personal appeal to war-weary Americans over the looming crisis.

Talks in Geneva between US secretary of state John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on a four-step plan, which includes Syria joining the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, will last till Friday, and could be extended to Saturday. The talks are meant to come up with a draft plan on how and when Syria will hand over its cache of chemical weapons.

Ahead of the talks, president Bashar al-Assad today said Syria agreed to surrender its chemical weapons due to Russia’s proposal and not because of American threat. ‘Syria is handing over chemical weapons under international control because of Russia... US threats have not affected the decision to hand over chemical arms,’ Assad told Russia’s state-run Rossiya 24 news channel in an interview.

The news channel, however, did not give further details of content of the interview that is set to be broadcast fully later on Thursday. Before leaving for the talks, Lavrov told Russian media that there was still ‘a chance for peace’ in Syria. ‘I am sure that there is a chance for peace in Syria...We cannot let it slip away,’ Lavrov said.

The plan, proposed by Russia this week, is aimed at averting any US-led military strike against the embattled Assad regime, which the US holds responsible for killing over 1,000 civilians in an alleged chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb on August 21. 

While Russia’s Kommersant daily made public the details of the four-point plan for the first time today, an article written by Putin appeared simultaneously on The New York Times, in which he spoke ‘directly to the American people and their political leaders’ on the Syrian issue.