Could Russia-U.S. Deal on Syria Chemical Weapons Lead To a Non-Imperial, New Internationalism?
Rush transcript from Democracy Now.
The United States, France and Britain have agreed to seek a “strong and robust” U.N. resolution that sets precise and binding deadlines on removal of chemical weapons in Syria. The announcement comes two days after the United States and Russia brokered a deal for Syria to surrender its full chemical weapons arsenal by mid-2014. We speak to The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, who has covered Russia for years, and Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich, author of “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.”
AMY GOODMAN: The United States, France, and Britain have agreed to seek a “strong and robust” U.N. resolution that sets precise and binding deadlines on removing chemical weapons in Syria. The announcement comes two days after the U.S. and Russia brokered a deal on Syria to remove or destroy its full chemical weapons arsenal by mid-2014. Under the agreement, Syria must also provide a full inventory of its chemical weapons within one week and destroyed equipment for producing chemical weapons and filling munitions with poison gas by November. On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov announced the deal at a joint news conference they came after three days of talks in Geneva, Switzerland.
JOHN KERRY: We are committed to try to work together, beginning with this initiative on the chemical weapons in hopes that those efforts could pay off and bring peace and stability to a war-torn part of the world. And I think we would both agree that we had a constructive conversation regarding that, but those conversations are continuing and both of us want to get back to them now.
SERGEY LAVROV: We’re here, basically, to discuss the issue of chemical weapons in Syria now that the Assad government joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. We have to engage our professionals together with the Chemical Weapons Prohibition Organization as we agreed with the United Nations to design a road which would make sure this issue is resolved quickly, professionally, as soon as practical.