Syria crisis: US says to 'look at' Russian proposal - as it happened

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov his comments about Syria averting a U.S. military strike by turning over its chemical weapons within a week were rhetorical and not meant to be a proposal, a senior U.S. Official said on Monday, Reuters reports:

Kerry also voiced "serious skepticism" when Lavrov offered to explore the idea, saying that the United States would take a look at any serious proposal, but this could not be a reason to slow the White House's efforts to secure congressional authorization to use force against Syria, the official told reporters traveling back from London with Kerry.

This blog has featured firsthand interviews with opposition fighters who are not happy about the idea of US strikes inside Syria because the fighters assume the real targets are them, not Assad. (See, for example, the previous post.)

One anti-Assad fighter calling himself Abu Usama told the Guardian's Mona Mahmood that "the whole world is conspiring" against Syria:

It is highly possible that the US forces want to hit both Bashar and FSA for the sake of Israel. [...]

I watched British Parliament yesterday on Jazeera TV, voting against striking Bashar, and I believe the whole world is conspiring against Syria and its people.

His fears would not be relieved by a glance at the Washington Post opinions page:

Islamist and Al-Qaeda-linked fighters among the Syrian opposition remain deeply skeptical of proposed US strikes, says Jenan Moussa, a correspondent for Arabic-language Al-Aan [Now] TV who has reported frequently from inside Syria.

Moussa (@JenanMoussa) is tweeting English translations of the fighters' comments:

Jabhat Nusra-emir from Deir EzZor responds: “if U.S. intervention indeed will bring down the head of (Assad) regime, then I am with it.”

JaN: ”But I am against it if strikes target (regime) bases that are not important, or areas which they (US) claim have chemical weapons“

JaN: “and I am against (intervention) when they make mistakes and do wrong strikes (on civilians) or they strike the Mujahideen.”

ISIS(Qaeda)-commander in Syria from AzadKashmir(Pakistan) tells us:“We r against U.S. intervention, we fight for 2years &US never cared.”

We ask him: What if US intervenes? ISIS-commander: “We r against both of them, both (Assad&U.S.) r enemies of Islam, we will fight both.”

Moussa's story here (Arabic).

BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen has been in Damascus for almost two weeks. His latest dispatch is published under the headline "Syria conflict: Nervousness grips Damascus once again":

Men and women, even children, are so used to the sound of shelling that they stopped flinching at the noise a long time ago.

At any rate, they do in Damascus proper, which is controlled by the regime.

This weekend, children, watched by parents on sun beds, splashed around in the pool of the hotel used by the United Nations relief staff and by foreign correspondents.

None of the families even looked up every time one of the government batteries, not far away, boomed like a demented bass drum.

The vast majority of the shellfire is going out from the regime's positions.

The rebels, much better armed now, fire some mortars back, which can be deadly, but have a shorter range than the Syrian army's artillery.

Read the full piece here.

The UN's Valerie Amos calls for a continued focus on the humanitarian crisis in Syria, through the vicissitudes of international diplomacy:

What I saw and heard in Syria drove home to me the massive human cost of this crisis. The UN security council remains divided over how to find a political solution. But in the meantime, we must come together to strengthen our humanitarian response.

I am calling again on security council members to work together to get us full humanitarian access so that we can reach people in the worst-hit areas, and protect civilians, medical facilities and humanitarian workers. I am asking all countries to dig deeper to find the resources we need to continue our work.

Read the full piece on the Guardian here.

The United Nations maintains a web page collecting the stories of Syrian refugees, who now number more than 2m, including nearly 730,000 in Lebanon, 520,000 in Jordan and 464,000 in Turkey. 

Over one million Syrian refugees have registered as refugees since the beginning of 2013, according to the UN; women and children make up three-quarters of the refugee population.

The UN "stories from Syrian refugees" page includes a short profile of a two-year-old named Hamad, with his family in a camp outside Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

Hamad, two and half years old, had just arrived from Syriain Domiz camp, in northern Iraq, with his family. For the past year, he and his family of four fled from town to town inside their war torn country. Here in Domiz, with the help of UNHCR, they are receiving mattresses, kitchen sets and blankets. Later on they will be given a tent, their first real home in over 12 months. UNHCR has a permanent presence in the camp responding to the needs of Syrian refugees who fled from violence and war. #UNHCR/ @eujinbyun

Visit the UN refugee page here.

Syria Deeply, whose founder Lara Setrakian is scheduled to participate in a Google+ hangout with secretary of state John Kerry tomorrow, published a story over the weekend about thousands of forgotten detainees in an Aleppo prison that was converted to an army base:

While the complex has militarized as a base, its original inhabitants remain in their cells, overlooked. It houses over 4,000 detainees, including “prisoners of conscience,” women and children. The prisoners can also serve as pawns in stemming the rebel attacks. Opposition forces say that when clashes intensify around the jail, regime forces have responded by executing choice inmates, often political prisoners, to pressure the rebels to retreat.

Read the full piece here.

Video: Russian foreign minister

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov says Moscow will push Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control.

This should be an interesting conversation.

Secretary of state presidential adviser president-elect ordinary citizen Hillary Clinton delivers a statement Monday afternoon on the crisis in Syria.

Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts and national security editor Spencer Ackerman are reporting out a stranger-than-usual day in the national capital:

Hillary Clinton is speaking on Syria as prelude to her comments at a forum on illegal wildlife trafficking, where she is appearing with her daughter, Chelsea.

Clinton is taking the Russian proposal very seriously.

She starts rather weakly:

"A vigorous and important debate is under way in Congress and around kitchen tables," Clinton says. This "challenge catalyzed the kind of debate that I think is good for our democracy."

Then Clinton shifts, referring to the "fluid situation in the last several hours." She says she just spoke with president Obama about Syria.

She has three points:

1) Assad action "demands strong response from the international community.

2) International community cannot ignore ongoing threat from Assad's chemical weapons stockpiles. "This is about protecting the Syrian people... and our friends in the regions... If the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control... that would be an important step. But this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction.

This discussion only could take place in the context of a credible military threat by the United States.

3) the broader conflict in Syria is a threat to regional stability of our allies and partners... as well as a humanitarian catastrophe. She mentions 2m refugees.

Then, abruptly, she shifts to illegal wildlife trafficking.

It's not clear whether the call between Kerry and Lavrov was pre-scheduled, Harf, the US state department spokeswoman, says. She's going to check.

The US secretary of state spoke with the Russian foreign minister after the secretary made a "rhetorical and hypothetical" offer to call off US strikes on Assad (which may depend on a congressional battle the president appears to be losing) if Assad turns over his sarin.

It's not clear whether the talk between Kerry and Lavrov happened before Lavrov came out and enthusiastically took Kerry up on the idea, which Damascus subsequently "welcomed."

Blinken echoed Harf's statement that the US will take a "hard look" at the Russian proposal:

We haven't had a chance to look at it yet, we haven't had a chance to talk to the Russians about it.

We would welcome Assad giving up his chemical weapons... that's the whole unfortunately the track record to date... doesn't give you a lot of confidence... That said, we want to look hard at what the Russians have proposed.

The state department spokeswoman has been talking for a half hour about how the Russian proposal is just talk, action is what counts and Russian actions on Syria have been anti-productive for years.

So the likelihood of this kind of denouement seems exceedingly slim.

It's not as if such an agreement would end the war in Syria.

Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken has appeared at a White House briefing – running parallel to the state department briefing and Susan Rice speech – to make the case for strikes on Syria.

"If we don't act, the international norm against the use of chemical weapons will be weakened," he says.

Back at the state department, Harf is insisting that the idea to put chemical weapons under international control was started by the Russians, not by Kerry's "end of week" deadline in his news conference with Hague in London.

"It was rhetorical and hypothetical," Harf says of Kerry's remarks. "He didn't put it out there as a proposal.

"I think that the Russians have repeatedly used stalling tactics and then picking up this ball" is another stalling tactic, Harf says.

Harf, the state department spokeswoman, underscores US skepticism of the talk coming out of Moscow and Damascus about a new quarantine of Syrian chemical weapons. "All we've heard today are statements from Russians and Syrians who've lied for the last two years..." Harf says.

She says the US has "serious and deep skepticism about this last statement."

"If we see any indication that this latest statement has any merit" we'll look at it, Harf says. But "everything we've seen from the Assad regime points in the opposite direction."

AP's Matt Lee is grilling US state department spokeswoman Marie Harf the Russian / Syrian talk of moving Assad's chemical weapons under international control.

"Is a strike appropriate, even if they put this under international control?" Lee asks.

Harf says that's a hypothetical situation she cannot comment on.

"We're going to look at what's on the table... we believe a military response is appropriate," Harf says. "We can be sure that if we don't authorize this action, Assad will see this as a green light."

Then she says the US is leery of a "stalling exercise."

We don't want this to be another stalling exercise, and we have serious skepticism about the Assad regime [willingness] to get rid of their chemical weapons.

Then she implies the US is taking the offer seriously:

"We'll take a hard look at it... but what we're focused on ... is working with Congress to get this authorized."

Reporters in the room note that Britain and members of Congress have come out and said the new idea is a good idea.

Harf says the new proposal doesn't change the need for military authorization:

What we believe is crystal clear is that this proposal is only taking place in that context, under threat of military action.

Here's someone who's voiced agreement with Susan Rice's thesis that the UN is hopeless on Syria (believe her, she knows): secretary general Ban Ki-moon.

"Two and half years of conflict in Syria have produced only embarrassing paralysis in the Security Council," Ban said in a press conference upon his return from the Russian Federation.

Note that Ban went on to express hope that the forthcoming UN report on purported chemical weapons use in Syria could spark the security council to action:

Should Dr. Sellström’s report confirm the use of chemical weapons, then this would surely be something around which the Security Council could unite in response -- and indeed something that should merit universal condemnation.
I am already considering certain proposals that I could make to the Security Council when presenting the investigation team’s report.

Rice says talk of new diplomacy is baloney:

It's just not going to happen now. Believe me, I know. I was there for all those UN debates. I lived it. It was shameful.

Three times we negotiated for weeks over the most watered-down language imaginable, and three times Russia and China double-vetoed almost meaningless resolutions.

Rice makes the credibility argument:

"Failing to respond could indicate that the United States is not prepared to use all the tools necessary to keep our nation secure... [it] would raise questions around the world as to whether the United States is truly prepared to use the full range of its power."

"Other global hotspots might flare up," she says.

"Most disturbingly, it would send a perverse message to those who seek to use the world's worse weapons, that you can use these weapons blatantly and just get away with it," Rice says.

Rice says that diplomatic efforts have been exhausted:

"We and others have already exhausted a host of other measures aimed at changing Assad's calculus... these efforts have not succeeded."

Rice is starting to sound downright CHeney-esque. She says Assad gassing east Ghouta could "threaten our soldiers in the region and even potentially our citizens at home."

New America Foundation president Anne-Marie Slaughter introduces Rice. She begins. Rice says it's in the US interest to conduct "limited" strikes against the Assad regime.

She said the chemical attacks in Syria are a "serious threat to our national security." 

She says she'll explain why "it is in our national interest to take limited military action to [deter] future use" of chemical weapons.

Here's a Rumsfeld-esque phrase: "Opening a door to their use anywhere threatens the United States and our personnel everywhere."

US opposition to strikes on Syria is growing, according to a new Pew poll. The poll uses the verb "surge":

Over just the past week, the share of Americans who oppose U.S. airstrikes in Syria has surged 15 points, from 48% to 63%, as many who were undecided about the issue have turned against military action, according to a new national survey from the Pew Research Center and USA TODAY.

By contrast, the share of Americans who support airstrikes remains virtually unchanged: Just 28% favor U.S. military airstrikes against Syria in response to reports that its government used chemical weapons.

The new survey by the Pew Research Center and USA TODAY, conducted Sept. 4-8 among 1,506 adults, finds that this growing opposition to Syrian airstrikes is intense: 45% say they oppose airstrikes very strongly. That is roughly three-times the percentage (16%) that strongly favors airstrikes.

National Security Adviser Susan Rice is due to speak about Syria at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Guardian national security editor Spencer Ackerman is there.

In the course of his public diplomacy on Syria, US secretary of state John Kerry has told a congressional panel that he was only "thinking out loud" when he described a scenario for US boots on the ground in the Levant. The state department this morning explained that Kerry was "making a rhetorical argument" when he issued an ultimatum to Assad that apparently was empty, despite being quickly seized upon by Moscow and welcomed by Damascus.

In a roundup of other Kerry fumbles, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post flags an unfortunate statement Kerry used just this morning, in his appearance with William Hague in London, when Kerry called the military action the Obama Administration is advocating an “unbelievably small”. 

And then there's the fiery speech Kerry made on 26 August at the president's behest to lay the foundation for strikes on Syria. "There must be accountability," Kerry said that Monday. That Saturday the president announced he was going to Congress.

Let's look again at the US state department retraction of John Kerry's statement that Assad could resolve the crisis by surrendering control of "every single bit" of his arsenal to the international community by the end of the week.

The state department emailed reporters:

Secretary Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons he has denied he used.

His (Kerry's) point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That's why the world faces this moment.

Now Moscow and Damascus appear to have taken Kerry up on an offer he never really made.

The official US line on any concessions Assad promises to make on chemical weapons – when Kerry isn't thinking out loud – is that any such concessions, including renewed access by UN inspectors, are "too late to be credible."

(thx @RayaJalabi)

Damascus has heartily welcomed a Moscow proposal to undertake a purported disarmament project that coincidentally would make it more difficult for US leaders planning strikes to claim all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted, while not detracting from Assad's day-to-day warmaking ability.

Columnist Jeffrey Goldberg asks the question: "But why would Assad give up a potent weapon in his arsenal? I mean, it's possible, but doesn't seem so likely."

One of many questions surrounding the big news this morning that Russia has called on Assad to destroy his chemical arsenal – an astounding development, considering that a week ago president Putin was denying evidence of a chemical attack – is, to what extent the Russians are working with US secretary of state John Kerry and other US diplomats on the issue.

The timing of Lavrov's announcement– a few hours after Kerry said that Assad could resolve the crisis by surrendering control of "every single bit" of his arsenal to the international community by the end of the week, and a few days after Putin and Obama met at the G20 summit – seems to suggest coordination of some kind.

Lavrov played the announcement as Russia taking the US up on an offer to avoid strikes in exchange for the weapons' elimination – not, it should be noted, an offer that Kerry explicitly made.

[Add: Earlier Monday Lavrov and the Syrian foreign minister, Walid Moallem, made a joint call for new UN inspections. Renewed diplomacy could make it more difficult for the US to launch any strikes. Any real or perceived movement by Assad on chemical weapons could compound the difficulty. But the US has for weeks said that Assad has done "too little too late" to allow UN inspectors in, and is leery of empty talk out of Damascus and for that matter Moscow.]

Here's AP:

Kerry added that he thought Assad "isn't about to do it," but Lavrov, who just wrapped a round of talks in Moscow with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Moallem, said that Moscow would try to convince the Syrians.

"If the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country would allow avoiding strikes, we will immediately start working with Damascus," Lavrov said.

"We are calling on the Syrian leadership to not only agree on placing chemical weapons storage sites under international control, but also on its subsequent destruction and fully joining the treaty on prohibition of chemical weapons," he said.

Lavrov said that he has already handed over the proposal to al-Moallem and expects a "quick, and, hopefully, positive answer."

His statement followed media reports alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who discussed Syria with President Barack Obama during the group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg last week, sought to negotiate a deal that would have Assad hand over control of chemical weapons.

Speaking earlier in the day, Lavrov denied that Russia was trying to sponsor any deal "behind the back of the Syrian people."

This is Tom McCarthy in New York taking the blog over from my colleagues in London.

I'm handing over now to my colleague in the US, Tom McCarthy. Many thanks for reading so far.

More on the Russian plan over Syria's chemical weapons.

Reuters said the country's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, called a press conference to announce that it was urging Syria to put the weapons under international control as a means of preventing military strikes.

Lavrov said he proposed the idea to his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moualem, at talks earlier on Monday in Moscow and expected "a quick and, I hope, a positive answer".

It's worth noting that such a proposal would be unlikely to satisfy the US. John Kerry did suggest military action could be avoided if Syria handed over all its chemical weapons within a week, but officials stressed this was a rhetorical device rather than an actual plan.

A new plan from Russia - the country's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has proposed an idea for Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control as a way of avoiding military action.

More details soon.

This is video of US secretary of state John Kerry speaking at the Foreign Office in London this morning.

A minor front in the disagreements between the US and Russia over Syria has been the latter's request for the International Atomic Energy Agency to examine the potential impact if an American strike affcted a research reactor near Damascus.

AP is reporting that Russia is pressing the IAEA to take action, while Reuters quotes an unnamed US diplomat as saying "requests for comprehensive risk analyses of hypothetical scenarios are beyond the IAEA's statutory authority".

CBS have also put up quotes from Assad from the same interview, in which he insists he had no prior knowledge of the presumed chemical weapons attack:

We - we're not in the area where... the alleged chemical attack was happened, as is alleged. We're not sure that anything happened.

Our soldiers in another area were attacked chemically, our soldiers. They went to the hospital, as casualties because of chemical weapons. But in the area where they said the government used chemical weapons, we only had video and we only have pictures and allegations. We're not there.

Our forces – our police, our institutions don't exist. How can you talk about what happened if you don't have evidences? We're not like the American administration. We're not social media administration or government. We are the government that deals with reality.

Assad disputed John Kerry's claim that the US has intelligence showing it was Assad's forces who were to blame:

He presented his confidence and he presented his convictions. It's not about confidence, it's about evidence. The... Russians have completely opposite evidence that the missiles were thrown from area where the rebels controlled.

CBS has put up some clips of Charlie Rose interviewing Assad. In this section Rose asked the Syrian president about whether the US should expect reprisal attacks against its bases in the Middle East should it launch strikes on Syria. Assad answers:

You should expect everything, Not necessarily through governments. The governments are not the only player in this region, you have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideologies.

Asked whether talk of "every action" could include chemical attacks, Assad said this would depend if rebel or Islamist groups had access to them:

It could happen, I don't know. I'm not a fortune teller.

Snippets are emerging of comments made by Assad during an interview with CBS television in Damascus, and clearly aimed at a US audience.

Denying again his forces had any involvement in the presumed chemical weapons attack on 21 August, Assad warned the US of likely reprisals if it attacked his country, saying Americans should "expect every action".

More quotes soon.

It seems that when John Kerry told Syria it could only avoid military attack if it handed over its stocks of chemical weapons within a week, the most eye-catching line from his comments in London this morning, he was not being literal.

In an emailed statement of clarification the state department said:

Secretary Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons he has denied he used.

His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That's why the world faces this moment.

It's worth mentioning that some anti-war protesters were outside the Foreign Office in London for Kerry's visit. Here's a picture of them.

Later today, Barack Obama is set to begin an intensive push to persuade both US lawmakers and the wider American public of the case for action in Syria.

He's due to begin the day with a round of TV appearances, and will then meet Senate Democrats on Tuesday. More here from the Washington Post.

Simon Jenkins has given his reaction to the Kerry words from earlier: his verdict is that in planning a response to the presumed chemical weapons attack, "international law is confused with American pride". He writes:

Missiles are poor law enforcers. They rarely kill the right people. They cause vast destruction, wrecking the lives of civilians and increasing their dependency on their oppressors. Missile attacks are mere displays of power, usually as a spectacular alternative to a ground assault. Their military ineffectiveness makes them susceptible to mission creep.

Already Obama has shifted from threatening a "surgical punitive strike" to a massively destructive one, intended to aid the insurgency and thus assist in regime change. This happens to be against international law. More to the point, such missile attacks did not "work" in Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan. They merely served as a prelude to chaos on the ground and pressure for ground intervention.

If Obama means to achieve regime change in Syria he should be ready to invade. Since he lacks the will and the means for this, he is merely heading for a second humiliation. He should back off and deploy diplomacy and humanitarian relief instead. It is not much, but it is better than bombing.

If you've not read it yet, my colleague, Martin Chulov, has sent a fascinating story from the north of Syria, where Islamist militants fighting Assad's forces have something of a mixed reaction to the prospect of US involvement in the conflict:

While Syria's mainstream rebels are enthusiastically welcoming talk of an American attack as a chance to break the stalemate, the jihadist groups among them see things through a very different prism, in which my enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend.

All across the north, al-Qaida and its affiliates are on a war footing; a rank and file convinced that an old foe is coming their way and that if and when the US air force does attack, they will have little trouble staying out of its way.

"There are many among us [who] fought in Iraq and Afghanistan," said a second jihadist, a 26-year-old softly spoken Saudi, who called himself Abu Abid. "Our emir knows how to deal with them. And all know that while the Americans say they want to attack the regime, we are their real enemy."

We also now have a story, by Patrick Wintour, on Kerry's comments in London. Here's a flavour:

The US secretary of state has said that President Bashar al-Assad has one week to hand over his entire stock of chemical weapons to avoid a military attack, but said he had no expectation that the Syrian leader would comply.

John Kerry also said he had no doubt that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack in east Damascus on 21 August, saying that only three people are responsible for the chemical weapons inside Syria – Assad himself, one of his brothers and a senior general. He said the entire US intelligence commnity was united in believing Assad was responsible.

Kerry was speaking alongside William Hague, who was forced to deny that he had been pushed to the sidelines by the House of Commons decision 10 days ago to reject the use of UK force in Syria.

The US Senate is due to vote this week on whether to approve an attack and Kerry was ambivalent over whether Barack Obama would use his powers to ignore the Senate, if it were to reject an attack.

Kerry said the US had tracked the Syrian chemical weapons stock for many years, adding that it "was controlled in a very tight manner by the Assad regime … Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, and a general are the three people that have the control over the movement and use of chemical weapons.

"But under any circumstances, the Assad regime is the Assad regime, and the regime issues orders, and we have regime members giving these instructions and engaging in these preparations with results going directly to President Assad.

"We are aware of that so we have no issue here about responsibility. They have a very threatening level of stocks remaining."

In Geneva, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, has been saying there seems little doubt chemical weapons were used in Syria, while not speculating on who might have used them. She also warned of the dangers of outside military intervention.

AP quotes her as telling the UN human rights council:

The use of chemical weapons has long been identified as one of the gravest crimes that can be committed, yet their use in Syria seems now to be in little doubt, even if all the circumstances and responsibilities remain to be clarified...

The international community is late, very late to take serious joint action to halt the downward spiral that has gripped Syria, slaughtering its people and destroying its cities. This appalling situation cries out for international action, yet a military response or the continued supply of arms risk igniting a regional conflagration, possibly resulting in many more deaths and even more widespread misery.

Andrew Sparrow has just posted a very thorough summary of John Kerry's comments at the press conference. The summary of the summary is that Kerry is still very much pressing the case for US military action against Syria.

He argued that not responding militarily would bring its own dangers, said (see quotes at 11.02am) that Assad was responsible for a chemical weapons attack, and – in comments aimed very much at US and UK audiences – that any US attack would be "very limited, very targeted [and] short-term".

A pointer to the comments section below, where the Syria blogger Eliot Higgins, aka Brown Moses, has posted a link to his own blog which now has more close-up photos of munitions allegedly used in the presumed chemical weapons attack.

The Kerry-Hague press conference has finished, and I'll post a link to Amdrew Sparrow's summary on his live blog when it's up. But as a taster, Kerry said the US believed chemical weapons stocks in Syria were under the control of just three people: Assad himself, his brother Maher, commander of Syria's Republican Guard, and an unnamed general. Kerry said:

The chemical weapons in Syria ... are controlled in very tight manner by the Assad regime. It is Bashar al-Assad, Maher al-Assad, his brother, and a general who are the three people who have control over the movement and use of chemical weapons.

But under any circumstances, the Assad regime is the Assad regime and the regime issues orders and we have high level regime (members) that have been caught giving these instructions and engaging in these preparations. 

AP have more from the Moscow press conference, with Lavrov and Moualem saying they will press for the return of UN inspectors to Syria to continue their investigation into a presumed chemical weapons attack last month which the US says killed more than 1,000 civilians in a Damascus suburb.

Both are talking up the idea of peace negotiations, with Lavrov saying these would be completely derailed by a US strike.

Some more details now from the press conference in Moscow, where Moualem said before his talks with Lavrov that "the war drums are being beaten" by the US.

At the subsequent press conference, Lavrov warned that a US attack on Syria could boost terrorism, while the Syrian foreign minister warned also about the involvement in rebel groups of Islamist militants:

We are asking ourselves how Obama can ... support those who in their time blew up the World Trade Center in New York.

Moualem also expressed Syria's tahnks for Russia's support, saying Assad "ordered me to give President Putin his regards and express gratitude for the position taken before and after the G20".

Those quotes came via Reuters.