President Barack Obama meets with Members of Congress to discuss Syria in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Sep. 3, 2013. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 12 2013 (IPS)

President Barack Obama’s decision to put off a vote by Congress on the use of military force against Syria in order to pursue a Russian proposal to place Damascus’ chemical-weapons arsenal under international control has evoked both cheers and jeers from across the political spectrum here Wednesday.

While Obama’s supporters defended his decision – which he announced in a much-anticipated address to the nation Tuesday night – as both politically and diplomatically astute, hawks denounced it as what they see as yet another abdication of U.S. leadership in global affairs.

“The move may rescue Mr. Obama and Congress from the political agony of a vote on a resolution to authorize a military strike on Syria,” the neo-conservative Wall Street Journal wrote in its lead editorial Wednesday. “But the diplomatic souk is now open, and Mr. Obama has turned himself into one of the junior camel traders.

“A weak and inconstant U.S. President has been maneuvered by America’s enemies into claiming that a defeat for his Syria policy is really a triumph,” it declared, adding that Obama’s opting for delay and diplomacy could make an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities more likely.

On the other hand, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, one of the few Democrats who came out in strong support of Obama’s request for authorisation to take military action, praised his decision.

“Pres. Obama’s leadership brought diplomatic solutions back to the table, shows his willingness to exhaust every remedy before use of force,” she tweeted immediately after Obama concluded his speech.

The 15-minute address had originally been intended as the capstone of an intense week-long lobbying effort to persuade reluctant lawmakers to approve his request for an Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to punish Damascus for its alleged use of chemical weapons. It came less than 48 hours after Russia, Syria’s most important ally, unexpectedly tabled its proposal to bring Syria’s chemical arsenal under international control.

The proposal was immediately welcomed by Syria’s foreign minister, who subsequently declared his government’s willingness to join the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and open its sites for international inspection.

“It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the [Syrian President Bashar Al-] Assad regime keeps its commitments. But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force,” Obama said, adding that he had ordered the military “to maintain our current posture and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails.”

He also announced that he was sending Secretary of State John Kerry to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Geneva Thursday to begin negotiations on how the proposal will be implemented and in what time frame.

Those questions were uppermost in the minds of most analysts here who voiced varying degrees of scepticism about whether Assad was indeed prepared to give up his chemical arsenal, which is believed to be one of the world’s largest, and how feasible it would be, given the ongoing civil war and resulting lack of security in Syria.

Some hawks argued that Obama should have rejected the Russian proposal outright and launched missile strikes as he originally said he would several days after the alleged chemical attack Aug. 21 that, according to the White House, killed more than 1,400 people.

However, most observers agree that he had little choice once he asked Congress – in the wake of the British Parliament’s rejection of the UK’s participation in any military action – for the AUMF.

Initially, the administration thought that a combination of loyal Democrats and hawkish Republicans would give it the majorities it needed to pass some form of authorisation for one or two days of missile strikes that was narrowly aimed at deterring Damascus from using chemical weapons again.

But it soon became clear that public opinion strongly opposed any action that could involve the U.S. in yet another civil war in the Middle East. And, as the administration tried to appease Republican hawks like Senator John McCain, who favoured broader strikes designed to weaken Assad’s military machine, popular opposition to any military action grew.

“The administration’s best chance to get public support was to stick to the normative argument [that it was necessary to uphold the international norm against chemical weapons] and not to get involved in affecting the course of the civil war,” Stephen Kull, director of worldpublicopinion.org, told IPS.

“But the normative argument got muddied by more talk about trying to affect the outcome of the war and that – combined with the fact that there was no U.N. Security Council approval – clearly bothered people.”

Thus, despite intensive lobbying by the administration, which also enlisted the active and uncharacteristically public support of the powerful Israel lobby, opposition to military action surged from about 50 percent 10 days ago to around 70 percent of respondents, according to a flurry of polls taken over the past weekend.

By Monday, several senators who had been thought to be with the administration deserted it, casting the outcome in the Democratic-led upper chambre into doubt and forcing Majority Leader Harry Reid to put off a test vote scheduled for Wednesday. In the Republican-led House, which had always been considered an uphill climb, the chances of approval were considered close to nil.

Thus, when Moscow unexpectedly put forward its proposal, the White House, after some initial confusion, grabbed it as a way to avoid what was turning out to be a political – if not a diplomatic – catastrophe.

It also brought some considerable relief to lawmakers on Capitol Hill who clearly were uncomfortable with the unfamiliar position in which Obama had placed them – sharing responsibility for committing an act of war.

Even McCain, who found himself unable to rally most of his Republican Senate colleagues behind him but who blamed the administration’s incompetence in presenting the case for military action, said Washington had to test Russia’s proposal.

“The fact is you can’t pass up this opportunity if it is one,” he told CNN. “But you’ve got to right away determine whether it’s real or not.”

The big question now is whether Kerry and Lavrov, who will also meet with the U.N.’s Special Envoy on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, can agree on a plan to begin implementing the Russian proposal within a short period of time.

A bipartisan group of mainly hawkish senators, including McCain, are working with the administration on a revised AUMF that would authorise strikes if implementation has not begun within a fixed period of time– reportedly from 45 to 90 days – or if chemical weapons are believed to have been used again.

Whether such an AUMF would have a better chance of gaining approval in light of the events of the past two weeks, however, is the source of considerable debate.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Samantha Power (left), Permanent Representative of the United States to the U.N., speaks to journalists on the Syrian crisis Sep. 5, 2013. Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 10 2013 (IPS)

If Syria eventually agrees to relinquish its stockpile of chemical arms under the 1993 international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), what of the six other countries that have either shown reluctance or refused to join the treaty?

Currently, there are 189 states that have signed and ratified the treaty prohibiting the manufacture, use and transfer of the deadly weapons. But seven member states have been holdouts: Burma and Israel have signed but not ratified, while Angola, North Korea, Egypt, South Sudan and Syria have neither signed nor ratified.

If Syria agrees to accept the U.S.-Russia proposal to abandon its weapons under the CWC, it still leaves six others outside the treaty.

A meeting of the Security Council to discuss Syria, scheduled to take place Tuesday, was cancelled without explanation.

If a resolution, inspired by Western nations, is adopted by the Council later in the week, Syria is expected to agree to hand over all of its chemical weapons for storage and destruction by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) based in The Hague, Netherlands.

Asked what progress the Security Council has made on the proposal, the president of the Council, Ambassador Gary Francis Quilan of Australia, told reporters it was premature to speculate.

“It’s a step by step process,” he said.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), singled out two other Middle Eastern nations, Egypt and Israel, as either having developed or used chemical weapons.

He pointed out that Israel is widely believed to have produced and stockpiled an extensive range of chemical weapons and is engaged in ongoing research and development of additional chemical weaponry.

“The insistence that Syria must unilaterally give up its chemical weapons and missiles while allowing a powerful and hostile neighbour to maintain and expand its sizeable arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is simply unreasonable,” Zunes told IPS.

No country, whether autocratic or democratic, could be expected to accept such conditions, he added.

Egypt was the first country in the region to obtain and use chemical weapons, using phosgene and mustard gas in the mid-1960s during its intervention in Yemen’s civil war.

“There is no indication Egypt has ever destroyed any of its chemical agents or weapons,” said Zunes.

The U.S.-backed regime of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak continued its chemical weapons research and development programme until its ouster in a popular uprising two and a half years ago, and the programme is believed to have continued subsequently, he noted.

Asked whether the United Nations has the capacity to handle the weapons, U.N. associate spokesperson Farhan Haq told IPS, “The secretary-general has consistently called for Syria to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention and to fully abide by its responsibility to maintain the physical security of any chemical weapon stockpiles in its possession.”

The OPCW, which oversees the CWC, has considerable experience storing and destroying chemical weapons.

In a statement released Tuesday, Amnesty International USA said it welcomes steps that would lead to the removal or destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, given that they are internationally banned and their use is a war crime.

“Taking this initiative to the U.N. Security Council offers an opportunity for the international community to take other concrete action to stop the flow of conventional weapons that have caused the vast majority of civilian deaths, refer the situation for criminal investigation, and demand unfettered access for the U.N.-mandated Commission of Inquiry,” said Amnesty’s Deputy Executive Director Frank Jannuzi.

Asked about the proposal to transfer Syria’s chemical stocks to international control, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters Monday, “I think that would be proper [thing] for Syria to do, to agree to these proposals.

“Then I am sure that the international community will [take] very swift action to make sure that these chemical weapons stocks will be stored safely and will be destroyed. I do not have any doubt and worry about that. First and foremost, Syria must agree positively to this,” he added.

Harking back in history, Zunes told IPS Syria’s chemical weapons programme was established in response to Israel’s development of a chemical and nuclear arsenal.

The Syrian government has long expressed its willingness to give up its chemical weapons as part of a regional disarmament agreement as called for in U.N. Security Council resolution 687, which stated that Iraqi disarmament was the first step in establishing a regional disarmament regime.

When it had a non-permanent seat on the Security Council in December 2002, Syria introduced a draft resolution to this effect, but it was not tabled due to a threatened U.S. veto, he added.

Zunes said for more than 45 years, the Syrians have witnessed successive U.S. administrations provide massive amounts of armaments to a neighbouring country with a vastly superior military capability which has invaded, occupied, and colonised Syria’s Golan province in the southwest.

In 2007, the United States successfully pressured Israel to reject peace overtures from the Syrian government in which the Syrians offered to recognise Israel and agree to strict security guarantees in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied Syrian territory, he noted.