Syrians agree to deal over chemical arsenal

Walid al-Moallem, the country’s foreign minister, said last night that President Bashar Assad’s regime was ready to co-operate fully to implement a Russian proposal to put its chemical weapons arsenal under international control and will stop producing chemical weapons.

He also said that Syria would give information about the location of chemical weapons to representatives of Russia, “other countries” and the United Nations.

His comments on television came as the UN Security Council cancelled a meeting on a resolution aimed at securing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

The closed consultations had been scheduled for yesterday evening, but Australian Ambassador Gary Guinlan said in a Twitter message that the meeting was cancelled “following withdrawal of the request for consultations”.

Council diplomats had said Russia had asked for the meeting and there were no other details on why it was cancelled.

Efforts have now begun to set out a timetable for the process as Western powers seek to keep the pressure on Syria.

France has announced that it plans to introduce a Security Council resolution to ensure international verification of the disarmament.

President Barack Obama threw his support behind the resolution, even as he pushed the idea of US air strikes against Assad’s regime if that effort fails.

The resolution would demand that Syria open its chemical weapons programme to inspection, place it under international control, and ultimately dismantle it.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the plan for Syria to turn over its chemical weapons stockpile will only work if the United States agrees not to use force.

Mr Putin told reporters the plan “can work, only in the event that we hear that the American side and those who support the USA, in this sense, reject the use of force”.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Syria must do more than just declare its chemical weapons stockpiles and sign the international treaty that bans them if it wants the Russian-led effort to avert US military strikes to work.

Minutes after the regime announced it would take those steps, Mr Kerry said he hoped that it would “go further” in the interests of peace.

He said the Syrian government must “live up to what they just said they would do” and then co-operate with Russia “to work out a formula by which those weapons could be transferred to international control and destroyed.”

The Syrian foreign minister’s comments amounted to the first formal admissions by top Syrian officials that Damascus even possesses chemical weapons, following the suspected chemical attack in an area of Damascus on August 21 which killed 1,429 people.

In interviews aired as recently as Monday, Assad repeatedly refused to acknowledge whether his regime did use them.

The Syrian National Coalition dismissed the Assad government’s turnaround as a manoeuvre to escape punishment for a crime against humanity.

The coalition had been hoping for military strikes from abroad to tip the balance in the war of attrition between rebels and Assad’s forces.

It said Moscow’s proposal “aims to procrastinate and will lead to more death and destruction of the Syrian people.”

“Crimes against humanity cannot be dropped by giving political concessions or by handing over the weapons used in these crimes,” the group said.

The White House said President Obama was still planning to push for a vote in Congress to authorize the use of military force.

However, that appeared to be a move designed to provide a threat to back-up diplomatic pressure, rather than a plan for immediate air strikes on the country in retaliation for the use of toxic gas against civilians.