Securing Syrian Chemical Weapons Seen Facing Months of Hurdles

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-10/securing-syrian-chemical-weapons-seen-facing-months-of-hurdles.html

Securing Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons as a first step toward destroying them would be neither a short nor an easy process, and it could require a halt to the fighting to allow inspections.

“These kind of disarmament agreements require a very intrusive inspection system; the natural assumption is Assad will cheat,” said Gary Samore, President Barack Obama’s former coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction. “I just don’t know how you can have that kind of inspection system in the middle of a civil war.”

Getting President Bashar al-Assad to turn over his chemical weapons to international monitors has emerged as an alternative to a potential American military strike. Russia seized on comments by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who raised the idea as one way to resolve the standoff, and Syria agreed to the Russian proposal.

The U.S., U.K. and France will consult with Russia and China on a United Nations Security Council resolution “requiring Assad to give up his chemical weapons and to ultimately destroy them under international control,” Obama said last night in a televised White House speech. Any accord must verify that Syria keeps its promises, he said.

[veganlush]

1. which is fine

He's not gonna use them in the interim

[customerserviceguy]

2. What are we going to do

when the rebels start shooting members of an international force dedicated to securing and then destroying these weapons, because the rebels see an opening to grab them?

It's been said that there are no good answers in Syria, while this one seems good, it is merely the least bad of the ideas out there at this point.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

3. There is no deal. It's not possible. We're just going through the motions

to be allowed to walk away from something we never should have started in the first place.