The United States, Russia, France, China and Britain have agreed on the core of a UN security council resolution to rid Syria of its chemical weapons, two western diplomats said on Wednesday, but Russia said it might be another two days before all points would be agreed.
The foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the council met over lunch with UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon earlier in the day, the diplomats said.
They said a draft resolution could be presented to the full 15-nation council soon, and the five permanent members would meet on Friday to discuss a proposed Syria peace conference in Geneva.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Gennady Gatilov, told Associated Press the text of the resolution would include a reference to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which allows for military and non-military actions to promote peace and security.
But he stressed there would be no automatic trigger for such measures, meaning the council would have to follow up with another resolution to take military action if Syria failed to comply.
Gatilov said the negotiations were “going quite well” and the draft resolution should be finalised “very soon within the next two days, I think”.
As for Chapter 7, he said, “It will be mentioned but there is the understanding, of course, [that] there is no automaticity in engaging Chapter 7.”
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius agreed there were still “a few details to solve, but I think we shall reach a common resolution, maybe today, or tomorrow”.
"I’m pretty optimistic because there were three elements which were a bit difficult, really difficult," he told students at Columbia University on Wednesday evening.
"The first one was to include a sentence which would say that the use of chemical weapons everywhere, particularly in Syria, were crimes" that the Security Council can address, Fabius said. "That is accepted."
The second was Chapter 7. Fabius said the third issue “is to say that there is accountability of people who have committed this sort of crime, and it is accepted”.
Britain’s UN ambassador Mark Lyall Grant also reported progress.
"But there are still some differences," he told AP. "We hope to be able to iron them out, maybe even today, but certainly in the next few days."
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations are continuing, said the two sides were “very, very close” and the US “fully expects to have a resolution by the end of the week”.
"It seems that things are moving forward," a western diplomatic source said, adding that there was "an agreement among the five on the core".
"We are closer on all the key points," he said.
But Russia rejected suggestions by the diplomats that full agreement had been reached.
"This is just their wishful thinking," the spokesman for Russia’s UN delegation said. "It is not the reality. The work on the draft resolution is still going on."
The five veto-wielding permanent members of the security council – Russia, the United States, France, Britain and China – have been negotiating a resolution to demand the destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal in line with a US-Russian deal reached earlier this month.
Negotiations on a draft in New York had come to a standstill while Russia and the United States struggled to reach an agreement acceptable to both.
Russia, a staunch ally of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, has made clear it would not accept an initial resolution under Chapter 7 and that any punitive measures would come only in the event of clearly proven Syrian non-compliance on the basis of a second council resolution under Chapter 7.
Assad agreed to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons in the wake of a sarin gas strike on civilians in the suburbs of Damascus last month – the world’s deadliest chemical arms attack in 25 years.
Washington blamed Assad’s forces for the attack, which it said killed more than 1,400 people, and President Barack Obama threatened a US military strike in response. Russia and Assad have blamed the attack on rebels who are battling to overthrow him in a civil war raging since 2011.
