Syria vows to submit data on chemical weapons

Assad says this is the “standard process” and his country will follow it.

In an interview with Russia’s Rossiya-24 TV, Assad said that the process is “two-sided” and suggested it will only work if the US halts its threats of military action against Syria.

He also said his government agreed to surrender its chemical weapons in response to Russia’s initiative and not because of the US threat of attack.

“Syria is transferring chemical weapons under international control because of Russia,” he said.

He was speaking as US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Geneva to test the seriousness of a Russian proposal to secure Syria’s chemical weapons.

Mr 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 Mr 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 “do-able 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.

Mr Kerry planned to meet later with Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, before sitting down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Britain has warned that assurances by Syria that it is ready to give up its chemical weapons must be treated with “great caution”.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary William Hague refused to be drawn on whether Britain wanted a Chapter VII military resolution from the UN, saying, simply that it must be “binding” with a requirement for Syria to give up its weapons “within a specific time frame”.

“Given their track record, any commitment made by the Syrian regime must be treated with great caution. This is a regime that has lied for years about possessing chemical weapons, that still denies it has used them, and that refused for four months to allow UN inspectors into Syria,” he said.

“The United Kingdom will make every effort to negotiate an enforceable agreement that credibly, reliably, and promptly places the regime’s chemical weapons stocks under international control for destruction,” he said.

Meanwhile it was confirmed the CIA has been delivering light machine guns and other small arms to Syrian rebels for several weeks, following President Barack Obama’s decision to arm the rebels. The agency has also arranged for the Syrian opposition to receive anti-tank weaponry through a third party.