| CNN | - |
(CNN)
-- The world is expected to get a look at the findings of U.N. weapons
inspectors Monday as Security Council powers work to turn a U.S.
U.N. inspectors turn in report on Syria's chemical weapons
updated 8:36 PM EDT, Sun September 15, 2013
U.S., Russia reach deal on Syria
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- U.N. inspectors deliver their report to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
- "The military option must remain," French president says
- A Syrian official calls the Geneva framework announced Saturday a "victory"
- Syria's opposition says the deal doesn't go far enough
U.N. Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon received the inspectors' report on the August poison gas
attack outside Damascus on Sunday, the United Nations announced. Ban is
scheduled to brief the Security Council on the report in a closed-door
session Monday morning -- and two diplomats told CNN the report is
likely to be released publicly at that time.
The attack led to U.S.
threats of military action in Syria, where a civil war has left more
than 100,000 dead since 2011, and Syria's stated decision to hand its
chemical weapons arsenal over to international control. Saturday, U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
laid out a series of steps the Syrians must take to eliminate its
stockpile.
The plan now goes to the
Security Council, where members are working to craft a resolution that
will keep the process under review and allow the world body to consider
the use of force if Syria fails to comply.
That effort will start at
U.N. headquarters in New York and in Paris, where French President
Francois Hollande told the television network TF1 talks would start "as
soon as tomorrow" among Kerry, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius
and British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
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"Then Laurent Fabius will
go to Russia to meet with his Russian counterpart to end this process,
and we could vote on this resolution before the end of the week,"
Hollande said. But he added, "This does not mean that we would be done
with the case. The violence is still ongoing, the war in Syria is still
ongoing, so the next step will be to find a political solution."
Under the plan, Damascus
must submit a comprehensive list of its chemical arsenal within one
week, and international inspectors must be on the ground no later than
November. Senior U.S. State Department officials said that according to
the timeline, initial inspections of declared chemical weapons sites
must be completed by November; all production and mixing and filling
equipment must be destroyed by November; and all chemical weapons
material must be eliminated by mid-2014.
Russia is Syria's leading
ally and has vetoed Security Council resolutions on the conflict in the
past. China, the fifth of the veto-wielding Security Council members,
said Sunday it welcomed the deal.
"We believe this
framework agreement has cooled the tense situation in Syria and has
opened a new opportunity to use a peaceful means to resolve the chemical
weapons issue," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said after a meeting with
Fabius in Beijing.
The verification and
destruction process will be carried out by personnel from both the
United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons, the body that implements the international ban on chemical
weapons use, according to the framework agreement. A diplomatic source
said the OPCW will assess the timeline Kerry and Lavrov laid out in
Geneva to assist negotiations at the United Nations.
Syria confirmed it had chemical weapons in 2012. U.S. intelligence estimates it possesses about 1,000 tons of ordnance
-- mostly the nerve gases sarin and VX, which cause convulsions,
paralysis, respiratory failure, and death, but also mustard gas, which
inflicted horrific casualties on the battlefields of World War I.
Syrian official hails 'victory' in Geneva
A Syrian official,
National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar, called the framework a
"victory" and thanked Russia for orchestrating a chemical weapons deal
to avert U.S. military action, Russia's state-run news agency RIA
Novosti reported.
"On the one hand, they
will help Syrians come out of the crisis, and on the other hand, they
prevented the war against Syria by having removed a pretext for those
who wanted to unleash it," RIA Novosti quoted Haidar. He called the deal
an achievement of Russian diplomacy, and "a victory for Syria won
thanks to our Russian friends."
But in Israel, where he
met Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Kerry told reporters
that "the threat of force remains" to make sure Syria follows through
with the agreement.
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"I want people to
understand the key elements of what we agreed to in Geneva. It is a
framework, not a final agreement," he said. "It is a framework that must
be put into effect by the United Nations now."
And Hollande told TF1 that "the military option must remain."
"One must take into
account the threat of sanctions, if the agreement and the results of the
Security Council U.N. resolution were not carried out," he said.
"Therefore, we must ensure that there is some kind of sanction if it is
not applied."
A U.N. diplomat,
speaking on condition of anonymity, told CNN that the technical timeline
agreed to in Geneva would not be revisited this week in New York. The
thornier question of whether a resolution should be under Chapter 7 of
the U.N. Charter -- which potentially authorizes the use of force if
Syria is in violation -- remains to be worked out.
"You cannot just copy and paste what's in Geneva into the resolution," the diplomat said.
Also remaining to be
discussed is whether any resolution would condemn al-Assad's government
for the August 21 attack and whether it would call for those accused of
ordering the strike to face trial before the International Criminal
Court.
Both the U.N. diplomat and a Western diplomat said a vote isn't likely before mid-week, perhaps Wednesday.
The Western powers have
blamed government troops for the poison gas attack, which Washington
says may have killed more than 1,400 people.
Syria's government
denies using chemical weapons and has said rebel forces used poison gas
on its forces. But in a report issued last week, Human Rights Watch said
al-Assad's forces "were almost certainly responsible," citing photos of and videos from the attack scene that pointed to weapons not known to be in rebel hands.
Opposition group wants Syrian air power restricted
A leading Syrian
opposition group said Sunday that a ban on chemical weapons isn't
enough, and called for the Syrian regime to end the use of air power
over populated areas.
"The Syrian National
Coalition insists that the ban of use of chemical weapons, which led to
the loss of lives of more than 1,400 Syrian civilians, must be extended
to ban the use of the regime air power and ballistic weapons against
population centers, in addition to the redeployment of heavy weapons
away from population centers, and the prohibition of use of these
weapons to bomb Syrian cities and villages," the group said in a
statement.
"The world must not
allow the Assad regime to take advantage of the Russian initiative and
their joining the treaty on the prohibition of the use of chemical
weapons as an excuse to continue the daily slaughter of the Syrian
people with impunity," it added.
The group expressed skepticism about the chemical weapons deal.
"The Assad regime has a
long track record of deceit when it comes to dealing with the treaties
and empty promises in the regime attempt to buy more time," the
coalition statement said. It called on its supporters in the region and
in the West to strengthen its military capabilities.
"The coalition calls
upon the Arab brothers and Friends of Syria military to strengthen the
arm capability of the military opposition to be able to neutralize the
Assad air force and his tanks to force the regime to end its military
campaign and accept a political solution that will lead to a democratic
transition in Syria," it said.
Last week, Gen. Salim
Idriss, head of the rebel Free Syrian Army, said he has information that
Syria has already started to move chemical materials and weapons out of
the country, into Lebanon and Iraq. Iraq denied the allegation, calling
it "cheap propaganda."
"We confirm that Iraq is
against possessing such weapons and other weapons of mass destruction
anywhere in the world and under any excuse," said a statement Sunday
from the Iraqi prime minister's office.
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