Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that they are hopeful that new peace talks to end the savage Syrian civil war will be possible following successful negotiations over how to rid Syria of its chemical weapons, reports the Washington Post.
The two leaders are meeting in Geneva to work out the feasibility of a Russian plan to obtain and decommission the chemical weapons cache currently held by the government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Syria was on the brink of facing military strikes from the United States when their Russian allies proposed the plan.
"President Obama is deeply committed to a negotiated solution with respect to Syria, and we know that Russia is likewise," Kerry said. "We are working hard to find common ground to be able to make that happen."
Both Lavrov and Kerry met with an envoy from the UN-Arab League, Lakhdar Brahimi, to discuss the possibility of peace talks while their respective teams of chemical weapons experts focused on the disarmament plan. Kerry suggested that talks could take placed as early as Sept. 28 at the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York, according to Al Jazeera.
A spokesman for the Russian delegation told Al Jazeera that the meeting outlined "the logistics, process and agenda for the days ahead and they agreed on a shared goal of achieving a framework for the path forward."
The United Nations was informed by Syria that they will be signing the international treaty banning chemical weapons on Thursday and that they plan to reveal information about their chemical weapons supply in a month, according to CBS News.
All that was offered by Syria was information within a month, not the actual weapons, and this became a point of contention for Kerry as talks began with Lavrov. Kerry said that Syria's offer was a non-starter for the United States, according to CBS News.
"There is nothing standard about this process because of the way the regime has behaved," Kerry said. "The words of the Syrian regime in our judgment are simply not enough."
Russian President Vladimir Putin disagrees with Kerry and sees the announcement by Syria as a sign that a peaceful resolution could be in the not too distant future, according to the New York Times.
"I think that we should welcome this decision by the Syrian leadership," Putin said. "And I want to express my hope that this will be a very serious step on the path toward a resolution of the Syrian crisis. This confirms the serious intentions of our Syrian partners to go on this path."
