Americans Considering Russian Plan to Dispose of Syria WMDs

Will a deal prevent war? UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) meets Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Illustrative. Photo Courtesy of UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe.

Will a deal prevent war? UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) meets Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Illustrative. Photo Courtesy of UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe.

Turns out there might be a creative solution to the Syria crisis after all. While it won’t punish the Syrian dictatorship for gassing its own people, nor will it help end the horrific civil war in the country, it may appease the West’s greatest concern: securing Syria’s chemical weapons.

Long afraid the weapons could reach terrorists, the US is reportedly willing to take a “hard look” at a Russian proposal to remove the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) from Syrian control. RIA Novosti further reported that the Russians and the Syrians have backed the plan, intended to avert a US military strike on Syria.

The surprising diplomacy is potentially good for Americans uninterested in going to war in Syria, while at the same time hopefully preventing the use of chemical weapons again.

Syria’s security forces killed hundreds of their own people with poison gas, leading to international outrage. However, despite prepping for a military response to the atrocity, nothing has happened yet and even a limited missile strike is losing steam.

Speaking with PBS, US President Barack Obama said he has had conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin about putting Syria’s weapons under international control. He said further diplomatic discussions were ongoing.

“If we can exhaust these diplomatic efforts and come up with a formula that gives the international community a verifiable, enforceable mechanism to deal with these chemical weapons in Syria, then I’m all for it,” Obama told PBS Newshour in an interview.

Despite the optimism, he hasn’t settled on a Russian plan yet, noting that “we’re going to have to see specifics.”

(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, September 10, 2013)

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