WarSclerotic

Russian ultimatum to Assad: Give up chemical arsenal – or face US attack alone.

( If Putin succeeds in getting Assad to give up his WMDs, well gentlemen, we have a new world leader.  His protection of Snowden already won him the favor of most liberty loving people around the world.  If he cleans up his act in Russia there will be no stopping him. – JW )

Russian FM Sergey Lavrov: Assad must surrender chemical arsenal

In an unexpected turn of events along the road to a US military strike on Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday afternoon, Sept. 9  that he had urged Syria to hand over its nuclear arsenal to international control if that would stop an American attack. Moscow had lost no time in picking up the gauntlet thrown down by US Secretary of State John Kerry in London a short time before.

Asked if there were steps the Syrian president could take to avert an American-led attack, Kerry replied: “Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week — turn it over, all of it, without delay and allow the full and total accounting.”

The Obama administration had in this way given Bashar Assad a week to turn in his chemical weapons to an international team that would no doubt be put together by the US, Russia and the United Nations.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who arrived in Moscow earlier Monday, was informed that the Kremlin expected a positive and expeditious answer from President Assad. Within the hour, he came back with a welcome for the Russian “proposal” to place his country’s chemical weapons under international control. But he said nothing about letting the arsenal be moved out of the country and destroyed , as both Lavrov and Kerry specified.

Sunday, debkafile reported that a secret US proposal had been presented to Assad and that negotiations were in progress on a deal for a way out of the crisis generated by the chemical attack east of Damascus on Aug. 21. The transfer of Syria’s entire chemical stockpile to international control was a part of that proposition.

Our military sources add that Assad was in no position to flatly rebuff the Russian ultimatum; only to try and maneuver and haggle to buy time. If Moscow stops the air corridor lifting military supplies to Damascus, the Syrian army will quickly run out of ordnance for fighting the rebels.

This entry was posted on September 9, 2013 at 6:51 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.