14.09 Russia, US Agree Syria Chemical Weapons Deal in Geneva
MOSCOW, September 14 (RIA Novosti) The United States and Russia reached a landmark deal Saturday that will see all chemical weapons in war-torn Syria brought under international control and destroyed by mid-2014.
The breakthrough comes after weeks of intense diplomacy and almost three days of talks in Geneva between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his US counterpart John Kerry.
Washington had threatened a military strike on Syria claiming that President Bashar Assad regimes had used chemical weapons in the countrys ongoing civil war that started in March 2011 and has claimed more than 100,000 lives, according to the United Nations.
Moscow, which fiercely opposes military action, maintains that the chemical weapon attacks were carried out by Syrian rebel fighters, and Russian President Vladimir Putin called the US claims "unimaginable nonsense."
Saturday's agreement could be the first critical, concrete step towards ending the current crisis and achieving peace in Syria, Kerry said at a joint press conference with Lavrov in Geneva.
The deal stipulates that Damascus will submit a comprehensive list of its chemical weapons within a week, that weapons inspectors will be on the ground in Syria by November, and that all the countrys weapons will be removed or destroyed by the middle of 2014, Kerry said.
