Syria turned in an initial inventory of its chemical weapons on Friday, in advance of US-Russian talks in the coming week on United Nations action to compel the Arab nation to surrender its toxic arsenal.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Friday said it had "received an initial disclosure from the Syrian government of its chemical weapons programme." A September 14 US-Russian agreement, which averted an American military strike on President Bashar al-Assad's regime, called for an itemisation of Syria's poison gas stocks by Saturday.
Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, said on Friday it was "a positive step" for Syria to submit the list within the period outlined in the agreement, which calls for the Arab country to turn over its chemical weapons to international control for eventual destruction.
The move came as the US, France and the UK push for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution next week giving international force to the terms of the Geneva accord between the US and Russia.
Efforts to agree on a UN resolution encountered headwinds from Russia, Assad's strongest ally, which opposes any measure that alludes to a threat of force. "There need to be consequences for noncompliance," Rhodes told reporters on a conference call. "We would want to see the strongest enforcement possible."
Russia is also resisting any attempt to assign blame to Assad's regime for an August 21 chemical attack that the US says killed 1,400 people, including more than 400 children.
Moving quickly
The Security Council is set to negotiate on a resolution next week, as world leaders travel to New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly.
"We believe there needs to be a sense of urgency," Rhodes said. "We want to be moving as quickly as we can to get those weapons under international control and to destroy them."
The timetable has started to slip. The executive council of the chemical weapons organisation in The Hague, which would oversee Syria's chemicals disarmament, said yesterday it has postponed a meeting on Syria that was scheduled for tomorrow, aiming for a new date in the middle of next week.
Comprehensive list
The OPCW will submit the initial document for review by its executive council, of which the US is a member, State Department's deputy spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said, declining to comment further on whether Syria's submission met requirements of the US-Russian agreement.
"Clearly, we said they needed to submit a comprehensive list of their entire stockpile and programmes," Harf said. "But we'll have more to come, I'm sure, as we go through the list."
Russia has had close ties with Syria since Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, took power in a coup in 1970. Russia has been a major arms provider to the regime and maintains its only military base outside the former Soviet Union at Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus.
US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Washington he pressed for a "firm and strong" UN resolution in a "fairly long conversation" with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday.
Assad is likely to stop complying if the UN Security Council adopts a resolution that doesn't threaten force against his regime, said Firas Abi Ali, a London-based Middle East analyst at research firm IHS.
"Then you'll start seeing delaying tactics as part of the technical process," he said by phone. "For now, while there is a credible threat of force being used against them, they are going to try and appear very reasonable."
George Sabra, a member of the main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said he had no faith in Assad's pledge to implement the agreement.
