John Kerry and Russia's Sergei Lavrov gave a joint press conference
at 6 am ET this morning. I assume that the 6 am time was chosen
in the hope that no Americans would hear it, since it was so
embarrassing. I transcribed the first three minutes of it,
which was the first part of John Kerry's statement:
John Kerry wrote:
> I'm particularly grateful to Sergei Lavrov who stayed extra time
> from what he had originally planned, hoping we'd finish sooner,
> and this gave us additional opportunity to be able to work through
> some of the issues.
> I especially wanna thank the cooperative effort of Sergei Lavrov,
> who has worked hard and his entire delegation, including teams of
> the world's foremost chemical weapons experts, who have joined us
> here for the important discussions that we've had over the last
> two days.
> Two weeks ago made the decision that because of the egregious use
> of chemical weapons in Syria against innocent Syrian citizens,
> women and children, all indiscriminately murdered in the night
> that claimed the lives even of people trying to rescue people, he
> believed it was critical for the world to say "No more."
> The president made the difficult decision that after multiple
> warnings, it was his decision that the time had come to take
> military action to deter future use of such weapons.
> But he also made the decision that we needed to take time to
> enlist the support of the congress and the American people, and I
> have no doubt that the combination of the threat of force, and the
> willingness to pursue diplomacy helped to bring us to this moment.
> But diplomacy requires willing partners, and I wanna thank
> President Putin for his willingness to pick up on the possibility
> of negotiating an ended to Syrian weapons of mass destruction.
> His willingness to embrace ideas for how to accomplish this goal,
> and his willingness to send foreign minister Lavrov here to pursue
> 12:03 this effort was essential to getting to this point.
> And I wanna thank Sergei Lavrov for his diligent efforts and the
> efforts of his entire delegation who worked hard and in good faith
> to overcome difficulties and even disagreements. In order to try
> to find a way through tireless efforts to get us where we are
> today."
It's good to see that Sergei Lavrov was effusively thanked several
times for his magnificent effort of staying an extra day to fully make
fools of the U.S. administration once again. I wouldn't want Lavrov
to think that his magnificent efforts were not appreciated by John
Kerry. John Kerry also expressed thanks to Vladimir Putin for sending
the magnificant Lavrov to meet with Kerry. I was disappointed,
though, that Kerry never took a moment to thank Bashar al-Assad for
his magnificent efforts as well.
As for the terms of the agreement, as I understand them, they are as
follows:
- The U.S. completely backs down on its threats of violence. Those
ships in the Mediterranean Sea can all go home.
- Bashar al-Assad is supposed to produce a list of all his chemical
weapons within seven days.
- There are supposed to be U.N. inspectors on the ground sometime in
November.
- All of al-Assad's chemical weapons will be destroyed or removed by
mid-2014.
- If anything goes wrong, the U.N. Security Council will debate it
(where Lavrov has a veto). There is a "commitment to impose
measures," such as sanctions. Typical measures in the past have been
to threaten to hold another meeting.
The Obama administration is taking credit for this agreement, saying
that the threats of military intervention, as well as all the
flip-flops and gaffes, were actually done on purpose, just to bring
this agreement about. Well, we'll have to see if any of the terms of
this agreement will be implemented.
Reports indicate that now that the threat of American force has ended,
Syria's air force is doubling its attacks with conventional weapons.
Russia's 2011 strategy of using the United Nations to cripple the Obama
administration and American policy is continuing to succeed
spectacularly.