McCain, Graham criticize Geneva deal on Syria

The two US Republican senators who support foreign-backed militants fighting the Syrian government have criticized a US-Russian deal aimed at destroying Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.

Arizona’s John McCain and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham said in a statement released on Saturday that the agreement was “an act of provocative weakness” by America, arguing that it would not resolve the Syrian crisis.

The statement also said that the deal would give Syrian President Bashar al-Assad time “to delay and deceive” while the country’s crisis continued. “It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama administration is being led into it by Bashar Assad and [Russian president] Vladimir Putin,” the statement said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov agreed after three days of talks in Geneva on the Syrian chemical weapons stockpile.

The agreement, which was announced Saturday morning, requires Syria to provide a list of its chemical weapons within a week, to allow inspectors into the Arab country by November and to help ensure the removal and destruction of all chemical weapons by the middle of 2014.

The US government blamed the Syrian government for an alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus last month against militants. President Assad strongly denied the allegation and said earlier this week that he would welcome a Russian initiative to surrender his government’s chemical weapons.

Right after the alleged chemical weapons attack, the US launched a massive campaign to gain domestic and international support for military action against Syria. Washington’s efforts however failed as a large number of American lawmakers, the US public opinion, and the majority of countries throughout the world opposed any military strike on Syria that could result in a regional war in the Middle East.

On Saturday, the United Nations said it had received all documents necessary for Syria to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, and confirmed that Damascus would come under the treaty starting on October 14.

US President Barack Obama welcomed the Geneva deal, for providing “the opportunity for the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons.