JERUSALEM - Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday that the United States would maintain its threat of unilateral military force to ensure the success of the plan to eliminate Syria’s chemical-weapons arsenal.
“This will only be as effective as its implementation,” Kerry said in a joint news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “The threat of force is real.”
Kerry traveled to Jerusalem as the first stop in a series of meetings with allies to assure support for the chemical-weapons deal, which was completed Saturday in Geneva.
After meeting with Kerry, Netanyahu offered support for the plan, the first official sign of Israel’s approval. Earlier, speaking at a state ceremony commemorating the Israelis killed in the 1973 war, he had expressed a measure of skepticism.
“We hope that the understandings reached between the U.S. and Russia on Syrian chemical weapons will yield results,” Netanyahu said.
“Those understandings will be judged by the results - the total destruction of all the chemical-weapon stocks that the Syrian regime used against its own citizens.”
On Sunday, the United Nations said its chief chemical weapons inspector had turned over his team’s report on the purported attack to Secretary-General Ban Kimoon.
U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said the report was transmitted Sunday and that the secretary-general will brief a closed session of the U.N. Security Council on its contents this morning. He will also brief the 193-member General Assembly later in the day.
The inspection team led by Swedish expert Ake Sellstrom was mandated to report on whether chemical weapons were used in the Aug. 21 attack in the Damascus suburbs and, if so, which chemical agents were used - not on who was responsible.
The secretary-general said Friday that he believes there will be “an overwhelming report” that chemical weapons were used in the attack.
After conferring with Netanyahu, Kerry left for Paris for another meeting with allies. Today, he plans to meet with the foreign ministers of France, Britain, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
In a televised address Sunday night, French President Francois Hollande said he hasn’t ruled out the “military option” against Syria.
France, which has been at the forefront of international diplomacy on Syria, firmly backs the rebels and has strategic and historic interests in the region.
Kerry said Sunday that the agreement reached with Russia was a “framework, not a final agreement,” and still had to be put into effect through a United Nations Security Council resolution.
Hollande, Kerry, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and British Foreign Secretary William Hague will meet in Paris today to agree on a draft of the U.N. resolution.
Under the Geneva pact, the terms of the accord are to be included in a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which would authorize punitive measures if Syria does not comply. While Russia is unlikely to allow a military strike among those options, President Barack Obama has said the U.S. remains prepared to launch a unilateral attack if Syria fails to meet its commitments.
The accord, negotiated by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, sets a framework for finding, securing and destroying Syrian President Bashar Assad’s stocks of poison gas. The deal calls for early signs of progress, giving Assad a week to submit an inventory of his toxic weapons, and calls for initial inspections in Syria by November.
A high-ranking Syrian official on Sunday called the agreement a “victory” for Assad’s regime.
The comments by Syrian Minister of National Reconciliation Ali Haidar to a Russian state news agency were thefirst by a senior Syrian government official on the deal.
“We welcome these agreements,” Haidar told the RIA Novosti agency. “On the one hand, they will help Syrians get out of the crisis, and on the other hand, they averted a war against Syria by removing the pretext for those who wanted to unleash one.”
There has been no official statement from the Syrian government, and it was not clear whether Haidar’s comments reflected Assad’s thinking.
On Sunday, China welcomed the framework agreement. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a statement that the deal has relieved the tense situation and creates new prospects for resolving issues over Syria through peaceful means. Wang met with Fabius on Sunday to discuss the agreement.
Israeli security analysts expressed optimism about the potential benefits of the deal for Israel.
“It is a good agreement if it will be implemented as it is written, as it reads,” said Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israel’s military intelligence who now directs the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “I think it is a win-win-win-win for Russia, the United States, Syria and Israel.”
If the process succeeds, he said, it could serve as a signal to Iran that the United States and Russia are again joining up solve global issues, a message that could affect Tehran as long as it was coupled with a credible U.S. military threat.
But Yadlin added that he thought the chances of full Syrian compliance were low and that if the process failed, the Iranians would read reluctance by the United States and the West to use military force. Then, he said, the chances are that the Iranians would be encouraged to accelerate their nuclear efforts, and that “will transfer the ball to the Israeli court.”
The U.S. has accused the Assad government of using poison gas against rebel-held suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21, killing more than 1,400 people. Other death toll estimates are far lower. Syria has denied the allegations and blamed the rebels for the attack.
The suspected chemical attack raised the prospect of U.S.-led military action against Syria that the rebels hoped would tip the civil war in their favor. But as the strikes appeared imminent, the Parliament of key U.S. ally Britain voted against military action and Obama decided to ask Congress for authorization first, delaying an armed response.
Russia then floated the idea of Syria relinquishing its chemical arsenal to avert Western strikes, and the Assad regime quickly agreed. On Saturday, Moscow and Washington struck a framework agreement to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical stockpile.
Obama said Sunday that his primary aim is to prevent more deaths from chemical-weapons attacks.
“My entire goal throughout this exercise is to make sure what happened Aug. 21 does not happen again,” Obama said in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “We have the possibility of making sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
Lawmakers assessing the agreement argued Sunday about whether Obama was outfoxed by the Russians and had lost leverage in trying to end the civil war, or whether his threat of military action propelled the breakthrough.
Republican lawmakers said that committing to remove or destroy Syria’s chemical weapons was laudable, but the agreement fell short by not mandating military action if Assad doesn’t comply.
Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the U.S. is “being led by the nose by” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“So, if we wanted a transition with Assad, we just fired our last round, and we have taken our ability to negotiate a settlement from the White House, and we’ve sent it with Russia to the United Nations,” said Rogers, R-Mich. “That’s a dangerous place for us to be if you want an overall settlement to the problems.”
Democrats insisted that while the agreement itself doesn’t commit the U.S. to using force, the option of acting independently of the U.N. remains.
Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Russia’s primary aim has been to force the U.S. to give up that option. “Russia has failed in that goal,” Levin said.
Vice President Joe Biden, speaking in Iowa on Sunday, played down the Obama administration’s pledge to use military force to rid Syria of chemical weapons. Biden instead touted the U.S.-Russian proposal.
“We’re going to the United Nations with a resolution this week that will in fact call on the United Nations of the world to put pressure on Syria to have the confiscation and destruction of all those weapons,” Biden told hundreds of Iowa Democrats at Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual steak picnic and fall fundraiser.
Biden touched only lightly on the administration’s continued insistence that “there are consequences should the Assad regime not comply.”
The vice president worked to stoke hope that the diplomatic solution would work. Making the administration’s first trip outside Washington since Obama’s speech to the nation Tuesday, Biden said Obama “is the reason the world is facing up finally, finally to this hideous prospect of the largest stockpile of chemical weapons.”
Also on Sunday, the U.N. humanitarian chief met with officials with Iran’s government, calling on the Syrian ally to provide more humanitarian assistance to civilians caught in Syria’s civil war.
Valerie Amos said she urged Iran’s government to help aid agencies gain greater access to those needing help in Syria.
“The humanitarian situation in Syria currently is dire,” Amos said. “We now have a situation where 6.8 million people in the country are in urgent need of help. That’s nearly a third of the population.”
Iran is a key regional backer of Assad’s, and it has occasionally sent humanitarian aid to Syria in the past.
A report by the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as saying Iran is ready for extended and effective cooperation with the U.N. to provide aid.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael R. Gordon and Isabel Kershner of The New York Times; by Matthew Lee, Ryan Lucas, Libby Quaid, Catherine Lucey, Thomas Beaumont, Thomas Adamson, Nasser Karimi, Edith M. Lederer and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Greg Stohr, David Lerman, Terry Atlas, Clea Benson, Henry Meyer and staff members of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/16/2013