Of course, despite the agreement on
chemical weapons, the Syrian civil
war has continued. A peace
conference, Geneva II, is scheduled
to begin on 22 January, but there is
no guarantee that it will produce a
political solution, or even end the
bloodshed. Nor will it reduce the
number of displaced Syrians living in
poverty and hardship.
Foreign Minister Lavrov claimed
credit for the improvement in USIranian relations and the landmark
interim nuclear agreement with Iran
reached in Geneva on 24 November.
While Russia certainly welcomed and
encouraged the deal (and is a
member of the P5 +1 group that
negotiated it), the election of
President Hassan Rouhani in June
2013 and a change of policy
authorised by Iran‘s Supreme Leader,
Ayatollah Khamenei, had rather more
responsibility for the success than
Russia.
Snowden
The reason for the cancellation of the
Obama-Putin September summit was
the offence caused by Russia‘s offer
of temporary asylum to Edward
Snowden. Snowden had arrived in
Moscow on 23 June, apparently on
24
There is general agreement that
Putin got Obama off the hook over
Syria. The British House of
Commons had already voted against
military
action;
Obama
felt
constrained to act on a declaration
he had made a year before that there
would be military consequences if
chemical weapons were used.
However, there was little US public
support for military action and, in any
case, it was unlikely that a US
military strike would end the war. So
Putin did help Obama. It is equally
true,
however,
that
Assad‘s
agreement to destroy Syria‘s
chemical weapons let Putin off the
hook – although he was adamant that
Russia‘s stance on Syria was right,
the impasse affected all his other
foreign policy initiatives.
Page
On 14 September the US and
Russia agreed a
Framework
for
Elimination of Syrian Chemical
Weapons in Geneva. On the same
day Assad announced that Syria was
acceding to the Chemical Weapons
Convention. This committed Syria
not to use chemical weapons, to
destroy its chemical weapons within
ten years, and to convert or destroy
all its chemical weapons production
facilities. Within a week, Syria had
handed over a complete inventory of
its chemical arsenal. On 1 October a
disarmament team arrived in
Dama scus to start work on
destroying the weapons and
production facilities. The weapons
are scheduled to have been
completely destroyed by the middle
of 2014.