MOSCOW, September 12 (Itar-Tass) - Syria will take urgent action, if all parties support Russia’s initiative to put chemical weapons under international control, Syrian Ambassador to Russia Riyad Haddad told Itar-Tass on Thursday.
“We have fully accepted the Russian initiative (to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control), this is a very good and great initiative,” he said. “We have fully agreed with it at once. However, it is necessary to negotiate many details. As you know there is the Charter of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and it has its rules. It is necessary to observe them.”
Haddad assured that “Syria was ready to join the Chemical Weapons Convention at once in compliance with requests of friends in Russia. This is purely a technical issue.”
Speaking about the date of the Russian initiative’s implementation the diplomat stressed the need for “more detailed consideration of this issue.” “Today Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet to study this initiative in detail,” he said.
“Now the ball is in the court of the United States and their allies,” Haddad said. “We are waiting for their response. As soon as Barack Obama and the world community announce they are in principle agree with this initiative, we will take urgent action.”
“We will think we have managed to remove a pretext that the Americans use as an argument for delivering a strike on Syria,” he said. “If this pretext is the main reason for launching a military operation against Syria, we are ready to remove it. If they have some other, ulterior motives, it is quite a different thing.”