United States president, Barack Obama, is now considering a Russian proposal calling for international overseers to take away Syria’s stock of chemical weapons.
The president announced in a speech Tuesday, “It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments [...] But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force.”
While many welcome the idea as a peaceful alternative to the air-strikes prompted by Obama and his team, some are skeptical that Russia’s compromise takes too much pressure off Syria and is too light a condemnation, The New York Times reports.
Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, called the compromise “a twofer,” continuing, “It’s a way of keeping the pressure on Syria and on Russia to get rid of chemical weapons, which is the goal of the whole effort, and second, if they fail, it would keep the authorization to launch a strike.”
On the contrary, BBC News reports that Russian president, Vladimir Putin, says such a solution can only work without a looming threat of force: an initiative that seems unlikely given Obama’s cry for a military strike.
Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem announced Syria’s willingness to release its chemical weapon stockpile to Russia, a significant measure in the light of President Bashar Al-Assad’s recent denial of even having chemical weapons.