Diplomatic efforts intensify on corralling Syrian chemical arms

{{Diplomatic efforts to place Syria’s chemical weapons under international control intensified on Wednesday as Russia warned that a U.S. strike could unleash extremist attacks and carry the country’s bitter civil war beyond Syria’s borders.}}

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone, the State Department said, one day before they meet in Geneva to try to agree on a strategy to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

The five permanent veto-wielding powers of the U.N. Security Council met in New York to discuss plans to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control – averting a threatened U.S. military strike – as Britain, France and the United States talked about drafting a resolution.

The U.N. ambassadors of China and Russia as well as Britain, France and the United States met for about half an hour at the Russian U.N. mission. They declined comment as they left.

In a reminder of the mounting atrocities in Syria, a report by a U.N. commission of inquiry documented eight mass killings, attributing all but one to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. It said Assad’s forces almost certainly committed two massacres in May that killed up to 450 civilians.

An initial French draft Security Council resolution called for delivering an ultimatum to Assad’s government to give up its chemical weapons arsenal or face punitive measures.

But underscoring the diplomatic gulf over military action, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned against a U.S. strike on Syria, saying such action risked escalating the conflict beyond that country and unleashing terrorist attacks.

Putin, writing in the New York Times, said there were “few champions of democracy” in the 2-1/2-year-old civil war in Syria, “but there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all types battling the government.

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