DHAKA: The US-Russia deal aimed at removing Syrian chemical weapons averted war and is ‘a victory for Syria’.

The Syrian minister of state for national reconciliation Ali Haidar said Sunday, reports TDS.

‘On one hand, it will help the Syrians emerge from the crisis and on the other it has allowed for averting war against Syria...,’ Haidar said in an interview with Russian news agency RIA Novosti in comments translated into Russian.

It was the first Syrian reaction to the deal US state secretary John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov clinched in Geneva on Saturday, under which Syria has a week to submit a list of its chemical weapons stocks and hand all of them over for destruction by mid-2014.

The two sides agreed that the United Nations Security Council, where Russia holds the right to veto any initiative, would take unspecified action if Syria violated the terms of the international convention banning chemical weapons.

Haidar, speaking in Damascus, said the framework agreement would prepare the ground for peace talks between president Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the rebels.

The deal ‘provides international support for all the representatives of the Syrian people to sit down at one table and to resolve their internal problems at the next stage’, he said.

Haidar said that the deal ‘gives the opportunity to solve in the future all the problems of Syria, not only the problem of chemical weapons’.

BDST: 1900 HRS, SEPT 15, 2013
RoR/RK