The framework carefully avoids a finding against the Syrian government. Obama to Assad: Keep promises

The United States and Russia announced a tentative deal Saturday to resolve the ongoing international crisis over Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

Under the draft agreement hammered out between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Syria will give up all its chemical weapons stockpiles by mid-2014 and allow international inspectors into the country by November of this year.


The deal eases weeks of pressure on President Barack Obama to act against the Syrian regime’s apparent use of chemical weapons on civilians — bringing to a close a tense standoff that brought the United States to the brink of military action in the Middle East.

”This framework provides the opportunity for the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons in a transparent, expeditious, and verifiable manner, which could end the threat these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people but to the region and the world,” Obama said in a statement. “The international community expects the Assad regime to live up to its public commitments.”

( Also on POLITICO: U.S., Russia reach agreement on Syria weapons)

The president also said he was reserving the right to act militarily if the agreement falls apart.

“The United States will continue working with Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the United Nations and others to ensure that this process is verifiable, and that there are consequences should the Assad regime not comply with the framework agreed today. And, if diplomacy fails, the United States remains prepared to act,” Obama said.

Before heading out for golf Saturday morning, Obama was briefed on the deal by National Security Adviser Susan Rice, according to a pool report. The president also spoke with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power and with Kerry, offering him congratulations on hammering out the pact, the report said.

“Actions will matter more than words,” Kerry said in Geneva, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. “We have committed here to a standard that says ‘verify and verify.’”

Pentagon press secretary George Little echoed Obama and Kerry’s statements, adding that the military hasn’t made changes to its force posture yet.

“The credible threat of military force has been key to driving diplomatic progress, and it’s important that the Assad regime lives up to its obligations under the framework agreement,” Little said in a statement.

Speaking in Geneva, where he negotiated the agreement with Lavrov, Kerry credited both the threat of force and the frenzied diplomacy on the part of both the United States and Russia for the breakthrough.

( PHOTOS: Scenes from Syria)

“I have no doubt that the combination of the threat of force and the willingness to pursue diplomacy helped bring us to this moment,” Kerry said.

The first tentative outlines of a deal emerged only after Kerry spoke off-the-cuff in Europe last week — suggesting that the only way the Syrian government could avoid a punitive strike was to hand over their stockpiles to the international community.

Though aides initially said he was not speaking for the White House and was simply making a rhetorical point, the Russians leapt on the suggestion. Within hours, the Kerry plan was embraced as the best possible solution by White House officials and by congressional leaders eager to dodge a vote on approving a military action highly unpopular with the war-weary American public.

Congressional leaders in both parties had been struggling to find enough votes among the rank-and-file for a resolution authorizing military force. Kerry’s plan — and Saturday’s announcement of a tentative deal — spares members of Congress for the time being from a vote on an unpopular use-of-force resolution.

In announcing the deal, Kerry thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government for its work on the agreement.

“Diplomacy requires willing partners. And I want to thank President Putin for his willingness to pick up the possibility of negotiation the end of Syrian weapons of mass destruction.”

Under the terms of the deal, which were released by the State Department, the United States and Russia will submit a plan to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the next few days “setting down special procedures for expeditious destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons program and stringent verification thereof.”

In the text of the “framework” released by the State Department early Saturday, Russia and the United States commit to seek action by the U.N. Security Council to create consequences if Syria doesn’t fully comply.

“In the event of non-compliance, including unauthorized transfer, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in Syria, the UN Security Council should impose measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter,” the U.S.-Russia deal says, referring to provisions that can be used to provide international authority for the use military force.

At the White House Friday afternoon — while the final touches were being put on the deal in Geneva — senior Obama Administration officials signaled to reporters that Obama would accept a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria that does not explicitly authorize use of military force if the Syrian government doesn’t comply with efforts to destory its chemical arsenal.

A leading Republican senator on foreign policy issues noted it was unclear whether the Syrians will accept all provisions of the U.S.-Russia deal. Syria has expressed a willingness to sign the international treaty banning chemical weapons, but has not publicly endorsed the mechanics U.S. and Russian negotiating teams worked out in Geneva.

“Absent the threat of force, it’s unclear to me how Syrian compliance will be possible under the terms of any agreement,” said Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the senior GOP member on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I’m still reviewing the details and believe Syria’s willingness to follow through is very much an open question, but I remain supportive of a strong diplomatic solution to Syria’s use of chemical weapons.”

Corker also blamed Obama administration bumbling for confusing Americans about U.S. goals in the Syrian conflict.

“The administration’s handling of this crisis has hurt U.S. credibility, so it’s vital that going forward, the President articulate how his actions protect our national interests in Syria and the region,” the senator said.

Even if the Syrians sign on to the new pact, implementing the agreement will be far from easy, given the fighting that has been underway for more than two years there between the government and opposition forces. It may be hard to know for sure whether Syria has declared all its chemical weapons, particularly if some have been distributed to field fighting units.

In addition, having international inspectors in the country is almost certain to result in some conflicts with the fighting forces and in disputes about whether difficulties in reaching chemical weapons stashes are the result of regime recalcitrance or actual danger of opposition attacks.

While the inspection process will be difficult, it’s at least possible that it could lead to an opening for negotiations in Syria’s ongoing civil war. Some diplomats are hopeful that ceasefires needed to accommodate the inspectors could be leveraged into some kind of broader deal to end the fighting and provide for a political transition.

In a bow to Russian and Syrian claims that the Syrian regime is not the guilty party in the chemical weapons attack that the U.S. says killed more than 1,400 people on Aug. 21, the framework announced Saturday carefully avoids blaming the Syrian government for the attack.

Putin this week argued in a New York Times op-ed that it was the Syrian opposition that had likely used chemical weapons — not the Assad regime.

“These extraordinary procedures are necessitated by the prior use of these weapons in Syria and the volatility of the Syrian civil war,” the United States and Russia wrote in the agreement.

Syria would be required to identify the location and type of its chemical weapons and related materials within a week of an OPCW “decision” on Syria. And the regime would have to give international chemical weapons experts full access to its production facilities and weapons.

The U.S.-Russia deal would set a June 30, 2014, target date for “complete elimination of all chemical weapons material and equipment.”

In the interim, it would set November 2013 as a goal for finishing inspections of chemical weapons sites and destroying facilities used for the mixing or filling of chemical weapons.

Experts have said that even with full cooperation from both sides in the fighting it could take a decade or more to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, believed to be the third-largest in the world. The agreement calls for “a combination of removal from Syria and destruction within Syria, depending upon site-specific conditions.” Specialists are also to “consider the possibility of consolidation and destruction in the coastal area of Syria,” the deal says.

Eliminating unfilled chemical weapons delivery devices is relatively easy. That can be done simply by having bulldozers or other heavy equipment crush the weapons, experts said.

However, weapons filled with chemical agents and stocks of agents themselves requires special, time-consuming precautions. They are usually destroyed in small batches by incineration, though some other approaches have been experimented with.