Obama's hypocrisy

Don't you love the hypocrisy. A week ago the UN inspectors were 'redundant', an attack was imminent and Putin the devil incarnate. Putin has saved Obama's bacon

US welcomes 'significant' Russian proposal on Syrian weapons handover

the Guardian ,

11 September, 2013

The US has welcomed what it called "very specific" Russian proposals to secure the handover of Syria's chemical weapons before key talks in Geneva on Thursday.

Placing its faith in Moscow's leverage over its Syrian ally, the White House urged patience and said it was increasingly confident that its Kremlin partners were acting in good faith by "putting their prestige on the line".

"We have seen more co-operation from Russia in the last two days than we have heard in the last two years," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

"The proposal they have put forward is very specific and the Syrian reaction is a total about-face. This is significant."

The sudden thaw in White House attitudes toward Russia has met with scepticism in Washington, where many see it as an excuse for Barack Obama to avoid defeat in Congress over military action against Syria. A speech by Obama to the American people on Wednesday night was criticised by hawkish Republicans after it called for a suspension of Senate attempts to pass a resolution authorising US strikes.

The White House insisted the Russian offer was genuine and a direct result of the pressure it had put on Syria. "There is no question that the credible threat of US force helped bring us to this point," Carney said. "By making this proposal Russia has, to its credit, put its prestige on the line when it comes to a close ally."

But writing on Wednesday night in the New York Times, Vladimir Putin drew contrast between Russia's approach and the Obama administration's talk of military intervention – something the Russian president warned could "increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism".

Syria was not witnessing a battle for democracy but "an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multi-religious country", Putin said, in an editorial repeating assertions that rebels rather than the government might have used chemical weapons, "to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons", and may be planning further attacks, even against Israel.

"[An American attack] could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilise the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance."

Putin welcomed Obama's consideration of the Russian-backed plan for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons and said his relationship with the US president was marked by "growing trust". But he warned: "It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America's long-term interest? I doubt it.

"Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan: 'You're either with us or against us.'"

Separate discussions over a UN security council resolution were taking place in New York on Wednesday. The talks in Geneva between John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will not cover the wording of any resolution. But the US tried to play down a potential rift over whether it should contain the threat of military action if Syria fails to comply.

The White House hinted the Geneva talks would go on for at least two days and refused to discuss the Russian proposal which it received on Wednesday.

"Each side will bring technical experts so I will expect this will take some time," Carney said. "There are communications ongoing and papers exchanged but we are not at the stage of putting out a public piece of paper."

The talks will need to resolve differences between western powers and Russia over whether the disarmament process should be backed by a threat of force if the Syrian government reneges on the timetable.

Diplomats also said that it was unikely that a UN security council vote would take place before the publication of a report by UN weapons inspectors on the suspected chemical weapons attack in rebel-held eastern Damascus on 21 August. That report is expected some time next week.

Meanwhile, US, British and French diplomats continued to meet at the UN headquarters on Wednesday to discuss a French draft resolution that would give Bashar al-Assad's regime 15 days to produce an "exhaustive, complete and definitive declaration of the locations, amount and types of all items related to its chemical warfare programme".

The draft, according to a copy obtained by Reuters, would then order "immediate on-site inspections of Syria's chemical, biological and related vehicles". The full security council was due to meet later on Wednesday.

The Syrian government has acknowledged it agreed with Russia that it would sign the 1993 chemical weapons convention, deliver a full declaration of its arsenal and its locations, and provide access to UN, Russian and other inspectors.

Kerry said that the US was still pushing for a UN resolution to bolster the plan and which would punish Syria if it delayed or broke off the disarmament process. But he indicated he was prepared to listen to the Russian point of view.

"We need a full resolution from the security council in order to have confidence that this has the force that it ought to have. That's our belief, and obviously the Russians are at a slightly different place. We'll have to see where we get to. I'm not going to negotiate this out in public," the secretary of state said in answer to questions on an online chat forum.

The president of France, François Hollande, also signalled flexibility on the wording of a resolution. A statement from the presidency, released after a meeting of Hollande's defence council, said: "The president emphasised France's determination to explore all avenues at the United Nations security council, in order to enable actual and verifiable control of the chemical weapons present in Syria as soon as possible."

France's foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, is due in Moscow next Tuesday to discuss the issue with Lavrov and may visit Beijing on Monday for talks with the Chinese government, which has been non-committal on France's draft resolution.

In a televised address to the American people on Tuesday night, Obama laid a path towards a possible diplomatic resolution to the impasse, He pledged to work directly but insisted military strikes remained a possibility.

However, in what were his most doveish remarks since his administration began briefing two weeks ago that a strike was imminent, Obama said he would wait for the United Nations inspectors to complete their report on the 21 August chemical attacks outside Damascus before taking further action. He said there were "encouraging signs" of a political resolution.

In London, officials revealed that Britain approved the export to Syria of more chemicals that could be used to make sarin, a powerful nerve agent, than had previously been acknowledged.

Five export licences were approved for the sale of more than 4,000kg of sodium fluoride between 2004 and 2010. They were on top of exports approved last year of sodium fluoride and potassium fluoride under licences but subsequently revoked on the grounds they could be used as precursor chemicals in the manufacture of weapons.

The five licences were revealed by Vince Cable, the business secretary, in a letter to Sir Robert Stanley, chairman of the Commons committee on export controls.