After a second day of marathon talks in Geneva between Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia, both sides expressed optimism, while American officials here said they would give the process a couple of weeks to see if it gained traction. But daunting obstacles remain to dismantling Syria’s vast chemical arsenal as negotiators try to defuse a confrontation that has inflamed politics on three continents.A significant sign of movement at the United Nations came when the Obama administration effectively took force off the table in discussions over the shape of a Security Council resolution governing any deal with Syria. Although Mr. Obama reserved the right to order an American military strike without the United Nations’ backing if Syria reneges on its commitments, senior officials said he understood that Russia would never allow a Security Council resolution authorizing force.
As a strategic matter, that statement simply acknowledged the reality on the Security Council, where Russia wields a veto and has vowed to block any military action against Syria, its ally. But Mr. Obama’s decision to concede the point early in talks underscored his desire to forge a workable diplomatic compromise and avoid a strike that would be deeply unpopular at home. It came just days after France, his strongest supporter on Syria, proposed a resolution that included a threat of military action.
Instead, Mr. Obama will insist that any Security Council resolution build in other measures to enforce a deal with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, possibly including sanctions or other penalties, according to officials who requested anonymity in order to discuss negotiations candidly. The president would not agree to Syria’s demand to renounce any use of force, said the officials, who argued that it was the threat of force that had brought Moscow and Damascus to the negotiating table.Administration officials were encouraged by the talks in Geneva. They said the Russians seemed serious enough to not simply be trying to disrupt the possibility of a military strike, but the officials added that there was no guarantee they could resolve significant disagreements on any eventual deal.In Geneva, a senior administration official said the two sides had moved closer to consensus on the size of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, an essential prerequisite to any joint plan to control and dismantle it.
Russian officials arrived in Geneva with a substantially lower assessment of the arsenal’s size than the 1,000 tons Mr. Kerry had cited. But two days of talks between Russian and American arms control experts, including an intelligence briefing by the American side, came closer to producing a common understanding of the scope of Syria’s chemical weapons program.
Mr. Obama expressed cautious optimism on Friday after meeting at the White House with the visiting emir of Kuwait, Sheik Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah. “I shared with the emir my hope that the negotiations that are currently taking place between Secretary of State Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov in Geneva bear fruit,” the president said. “But I repeated what I’ve said publicly, which is that any agreement needs to be verifiable and enforceable.”
The administration has not laid out publicly how that might be achieved, and officials on Friday left open the possibility that there might be an acceptable alternative to a Security Council resolution, although they did not go into specifics. Verification, they said, cannot simply be a vague commitment but must be a concrete process.