US, Russia fail to agree on Syria peace talks.

US skeptical over Syria chemical declaration

The United States is skeptical about Syria’s declaration of its chemical weapons to an international watchdog and is still checking its accuracy, a top US envoy said Tuesday, reports BSS
The tripartite meeting of the UN, Russia and the United States failed to set a date for the long-delayed Syria peace talks in Geneva, UN-Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said Tuesday. “We were hoping that we would be in a position to announce a date today. Unfortunately, we have not,” he told a press conference.
The statement followed a series of meetings with Russian Deputy Foreign Ministers Mikhail Bogdanov and Gennady Gatilov, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, and delegates from the other three permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as Syria’s neighbors.
“We are still striving to see if we can have the conference before the end of the year,” he said. The intention of the conference, dubbed Geneva II, was to gather all Syrian parties, including the government and the opposition, and there were hopes a date would be set for later this month.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to destroy all his banned chemical arms by mid-2014 as part of a Russia-US deal that headed off the threat of a US military strike. Samantha Power, Washington’s envoy to the United Nations, said experience dealing with Assad has led to US “skepticism.” Other Western envoys say their countries also have strong doubts about a 700-page declaration of Syria’s chemical weapons sites and arms made to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Damascus has also met a deadline to destroy its chemical and weapons production facilities and been praised for its cooperation by international inspectors.
But “more work of course remains to be done to ensure that the Syrian government’s list of declared sites is comprehensive and that the process remains on track, particularly as we enter the destruction phase,” Power said. American experts are still studying the “extremely technical” Syrian document, Power told reporters after UN Security Council consultations on Syria’s chemical weapons.
“We obviously bring skepticism born of years of dealing with this regime, years of obfuscation in other contexts, and of course a lot of broken promises within the context of this current war,” Power said.
“You will certainly hear from us in the event that we detect non-compliance or we detect significant discrepancies.”
Other US officials said Washington is concerned that the Assad government could try to retain some of its stockpiles.
But the officials said the US administration has full confidence in OPCW inspectors and any Syrian breach of its obligations would be dealt with “through diplomatic channels.” A senior official from another Western nation said there was “widespread doubts” that all Syrian arms had been declared. Norway, which had been mentioned as a candidate to accept the chemicals, has already said it cannot carry out the eradication operation because of the tight deadline and legal obstacles.Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said after the latest talks that his country would not carry out the destruction but could take part in the operation.