NATO chief welcomes U.S., Russia deal on Syrian chemical weapons

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has welcomed a U.S.-Russian agreement on the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons.

In a statement, he said that this is an important step towards the goal of ensuring the swift, secure and verifiable elimination of Syria's stocks of chemical weapons.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov reached agreement on a framework to secure and destroy Syria's chemical weapons by mid-2014 and impose UN penalties if the president Bashar al-Assad government fails to comply.

Rasmussen said that the international community has a responsibility to make sure that the long-standing norm and practice against the use of chemical weapons is maintained, and violators are held accountable.

 

He added that the agreement should give further momentum to a political solution to end the conflicts in Syria.