US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Geneva today to test the seriousness of a Russian proposal to secure Syria's chemical weapons.
Kerry and a team of US experts will have at least two days of meetings with their Russian counterparts today and tomorrow.
They hope to emerge with an outline of how some 1,000 tons of chemical weapons stocks and precursor materials as well as potential delivery systems can be safely inventoried and isolated under international control in an active war zone and then destroyed.
Officials with Kerry said they would be looking for a rapid agreement on principles for the process with Russians, including a demand for a speedy Syrian accounting of their stockpiles.
One official said the task is "doable but difficult and complicated."
The official said the US is looking for signs of Russian seriousness and thinks it will know in a relatively short time if the Russians are trying to stall.
Another official described the ideas that the Russians have presented so far as "an opening position" that needs a lot of work and input from technical experts.
The US team includes officials who worked on inspection and removal of unconventional weapons from Libya after 2003 and in Iraq after the first Gulf War.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly on the sensitive negotiations, said the teams that eventually go into Syria to do the work would have to have an international mix, as would their security.
Kerry planned to meet with Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, before sitting down with Lavrov.
The hastily arranged meeting in Geneva comes as the White House tries to pin 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.
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 yesterday.
