Obama pursues Russia plan for Syria weapons

WASHINGTON – With hopes shrinking for congressional support of punitive missile strikes, President Obama tentatively embraced a face-saving solution to the crisis over Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons, spurred by an offhand comment by Secretary of State John F. Kerry. Obama said Monday that he was looking skeptically, but seriously, at a Russian offer to push the Syrian government to put its vast chemical weapons arsenal and infrastructure under United Nations control. He called the development a “potentially significant breakthrough.”

“We will pursue this diplomatic track,” Obama said on Fox News. “I fervently hope that this can be resolved in a nonmilitary way.”

The Russian proposal, which Syria’s foreign minister said his country would support, followed a remark by Kerry that was so unscripted a State Department spokeswoman initially warned reporters it was merely “rhetorical.”

But it quickly developed into an opportunity. Members of Congress, British Prime Minister David Cameron, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other leaders hailed the possibility that Syria might surrender its stockpile of nerve gases, blister agents and other chemical weapons.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would delay indefinitely an initial vote on a resolution to authorise use of force in Syria, perhaps saving Obama a bruising political defeat. The delay marked an abrupt reversal in legislative strategy, just four hours after Reid had announced that senators would cast their first procedural votes on the resolution Wednesday.

“I don’t think we need to see how fast we can do this. We have to see how well we can do this,” Reid said. The vote would have been the first test of Obama’s increasingly difficult pursuit of congressional authorization for US military action.

Although White House aides were caught off guard by the proposal, by the end of the day Obama was claiming some credit for it, arguing that the US threat of force had pushed Russia and Syria to compromise. Until now, Russia has blocked attempts at the UN to censure Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s government for its alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians and other abuses.

Obama said he had discussed a possible UN solution with Russian President Vladimir Putin, most recently last week in St. Petersburg, where the two leaders met on the sidelines of a global economic summit.