Obama embraces Russian proposal on Syria weapons

mangaloretoday.com

Washington, Sept 10: President Barack Obama on Monday tentatively embraced a Russian diplomatic proposal to avert a US military strike on Syria by having international monitors take control of the Syrian government’s chemical weapons. The move added new uncertainty to Obama’s push to win support among allies, the American public and members of Congress for an attack.

In a series of television interviews with six cable and broadcast networks, Obama capped a remarkable day of presidential lobbying for military action and a dizzying series of developments at home and abroad. Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said early Monday that Syria could avoid an attack by putting its chemical weapons in the hands of international monitors, an idea that was quickly praised by top officials in Syria and among some lawmakers in the United States.

 

"It’s possible," Obama said on CNN of the Russian proposal, "if it’s real."

Obama’s statements opening the door to the plan, which appeared to offer him an exit strategy for a military strike he had been reluctant to order, came as support on Capitol Hill for a resolution authorizing force was slipping. Even some lawmakers who had announced support for it reversed course. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Monday evening that he would not force an initial vote on the resolution on Wednesday, slowing Senate consideration at least until next week. Democrats said they had enough votes to overcome a filibuster but possibly not enough to pass it.

A senior Democratic aide said that the developments with the Russian proposal were a significant factor in the delay, which will allow members to consider the plan and also to hear from the president, who is to meet with them at the Capitol on Tuesday before an address to the nation on Syria in the evening.

Obama called the Russian proposal "a potentially positive development" on CNN, but added that his threat of aggressive action in Syria had motivated the Russians to make it. He vowed to continue to press his case with visits to Capitol Hill on Tuesday afternoon and in his speech to the nation that evening.

The president promised that his administration would engage with the Russians to see if the world could "arrive at something that is enforceable and serious." But he said that "if we don’t maintain and move forward with a credible threat of military pressure, I do not think we will actually get the kind of agreement I would like to see."

The Russian proposal received the early support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I would welcome such a move," Feinstein said in a statement Monday afternoon.

Russia’s surprise proposal appeared to offer the possibility of a diplomatic alternative to military action by addressing the source of the attacks that killed hundreds and provoked worldwide condemnation. But the Russian proposal was also viewed with skepticism by Obama administration officials, who saw it as a potential delaying tactic that could undermine Obama’s already tenuous efforts to push for a military strike.

Secretary of State John Kerry opened the door to the idea with what appeared to be an offhand remark earlier on Monday in London, where he said that President Bashar Assad of Syria could avoid strikes by agreeing to give up his chemical weapons.

"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," Kerry said.

Lavrov later seized on the idea, saying that it might form the basis of a compromise.

"We don’t know whether Syria will agree with this, but if the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in the country will prevent attacks, then we will immediately begin work with Damascus," Lavrov said at the Foreign Ministry in Moscow. "And we call on the Syrian leadership to not only agree to setting the chemical weapons’ storage sites under international control, but also to their subsequent destruction."

American and Russian diplomats had long discussed the problem of how to deal with Syria’s chemical weapons before, including in May when Kerry went to Moscow. Nothing came of the discussions until after Kerry’s comments in London on Monday, when he received a call from Lavrov, officials said. Lavrov outlined the proposal to Kerry that he planned to unveil later in the day: Syria should allow international monitors to control the chemical weapons and agree ultimately to give them up.

"We are not going to play games," Kerry told Lavrov, according to a senior State Department official traveling with Kerry.

The cautious tone from Obama about the Russian proposal suggested that his administration was not yet ready to give up on its all-out push for a military response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens. Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser, maintained that push on Monday morning in a speech at the New America Foundation, a Washington research institution, in which she made the case for a military strike even as news of the Russian proposal was crossing the Atlantic.

Rice emphasized the brutality of the chemical attacks, opening her remarks by describing the "little children, laying on the ground, their eyes glassy." Failing to act, she said, would send a message of weakness.

"It risks suggesting that the international community cannot muster the will to act when necessary," she said, adding that they were "watching to see whether the United States will stand up for the world we are trying to build."

But by the end of the day, the White House had clearly signaled that the Russian idea might offer a way to avoid the potential for congressional rejection of his plans for a strike. After meeting with Obama in the White House, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the president’s former secretary of state, told reporters that the idea could be an "important step" toward preventing Syria from using chemical weapons again.

Later, in the television interviews, Obama repeated his desire to take the proposal seriously, while still pressing ahead to make the case for military action to the American public and lawmakers. In an interview with NBC News, Obama said he would take the Russian proposal "with a grain of salt initially." But he told the network that if Syrian officials accepted the Russian proposal, "then this could potentially be a significant breakthrough."

On CBS, he added, "I don’t think we would have gotten to this point unless we had maintained a credible possibility for a military strike, and I don’t think now is the time for us to let up on that."

Reacting to comments by Kerry that any attack on Syria would be "unbelievably small," Obama said any attack would not be felt like a "pinprick" in Syria.

"The US does not do pinpricks," he said in the NBC interview. "Our military is the greatest the world has ever known. And when we take even limited strikes, it has an impact on a country like Syria."

Obama also responded to warnings of "repercussions" that Assad made in an interview Monday morning with Charlie Rose of CBS News. Obama waved aside that threat in an interview with Fox News.

"Well, actually, we know what Assad’s capabilities are and, you know, Mr. Assad’s are significant compared to a bunch of opposition leaders, many of whom are not professional fighters," the president said Monday evening. "They’re significant relative to over 400 children that were gassed. They’re not significant relative to the US military."