Secretary of State John Kerry met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday, in an effort to seek a diplomatic breakthrough to the continuing crisis in Syria, NBC News reported. Thursday's meeting was hastily set up after Kerry announced, somewhat off-handedly on Monday in London that the Assad government may be able to avoid a military strike by the U.S. if it turned over all its chemical weapons within a week. The unusually delivered proposal, while answering a question by CBS News journalist Margaret Brennan, was later endorsed by his Russian counterpart.
In Thursday's press conference, Kerry said that "this is not a game," underscoring that Assad must move quickly if it is serious about giving up its chemical weapons.
"It has to be real. It has to be comprehensive. It has to be verifiable. It has to be credible. It has to be timely and implemented in a timely fashion. And finally there ought to be consequences if doesn't take place," Kerry added.
On the same day the two men were earnestly seeking a diplomatic breakthrough to the crisis in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote a scathing op-ed which published in The New York Times warning that an American attack on Syria would only increase violence and terrorism. He also slammed what he viewed as American adventurism around the world.
"It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States," Putin wrote. "Is it in America's long-term interest? I doubt it."
Russia's demand is that the U.S. drop its threats of striking Assad's government, something America had been planning for weeks since the August 21 chemical attack outside Damascus. The U.S. said that it has overwhelming evidence that Assad's forces used sarin gas against innocent civilians.
More than 100,000 people have been killed in the over two year Syrian civil war, according to UN estimates. A UN report also documented on Wednesday night said that there were eight mass killings in May alone, all but one of which it attributed to Assad's, NBC News also reported. Before this week, Assad denied that he ever used chemical weapons.
Also on Thursday, Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon received a letter from the Syrian government, informing him that Assad signed "the legislative decree providing for the accession of Syria to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction of 1992." In the letter,"the Syrian authorities... expressed their commitment to observe the obligations entailed by the Convention even before its entry into force for Syria."
The Secretary General remained hopeful "that the current talks in Geneva will lead to speedy agreement on a way forward which will be endorsed and assisted by the international community," according to a press statement provided by the UN.
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