ASTANA:
Russia has handed the United States a plan for the Syrian regime to hand over
its chemical weapons in four stages, starting with Damascus becoming a member
of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a report said on
Thursday. The plan,
first announced by Moscow this week, aims to avert threatened US military
action in retribution for a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that the
West says was perpetrated by the Syrian regime. Revealing
the details of the plan for the first time, Russia's Kommersant daily said it
had been given to the American side on Tuesday, although Russia only announced
on Wednesday evening that the plan had been passed on.
Speaking
in the Kazakh capital Astana, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov did not
give details of the plan but said it would work "on the understanding
that" it would allow force not to be used. As a
first step, Damascus would join the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Kommersant said, quoting a Russian diplomatic source.
Then Syria would have to declare the location of the chemical weapons arsenals
and where they are made. The third step would be allowing OPCW inspectors into
Syria to examine them. The
fourth and final step would be deciding, in cooperation with the inspectors,
how to destroy the weapons. Kommersant,
which is known for its strong foreign ministry sources, said that who would
physically destroy the weapons has yet to be decided but it was not excluded
that the United States and Russia could do this jointly.
Lavrov
and US counterpart John Kerry are due to discuss the plan in Geneva during talks
on Thursday.
The top
Russian diplomat — on a visit to the Kazakh capital before heading to Geneva —
said that both Russia and the United States would be taking experts on chemical
weapons to the talks. He said
Syria should join the OPCW "which will involve Syria announcing the
location of its chemical weapons and disclosing its chemical programme". "We
will discuss in Geneva this initiative ... on putting Syrian chemical weapons
under international control, on the understanding that it will allow the rejection
of the use of force on Syria," he said, quoted by Russian news agencies. Lavrov
said he did not rule out UN-Arab League Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi joining the
talks in Geneva to discuss a stalled US-Russian initiative for a peace
conference in the Swiss city. Kommersant
said that it was the American side who requested the talks after receiving a
copy of the details of the Russian plan.
അഭിപ്രായങ്ങളൊന്നുമില്ല:
ഒരു അഭിപ്രായം പോസ്റ്റ് ചെയ്യൂ