Kerry to brief Israel's wary leaders Sunday on Syria deal

Jerusalem would be only too pleased to see Assad stripped of WMD, but worries that he won’t heed new agreement

Secretary of State John Kerry will find Israel’s leaders skeptical when he comes to Jerusalem Sunday to brief them on the deal reached by the US and Russia Saturday aimed at destroying the Assad’s regime chemical stockpile by the middle of next year.

Israel would of course be delighted to see the regime of President Bashar Assad stripped of chemical weapons, unnamed officials in Jerusalem said Saturday night. But Israel is extremely wary of the unfolding diplomatic framework, concerned that Assad is bent on buying time, and that the optimistic timetable set out in Saturday’s agreement will not be adhered to. Kerry will meet a “skeptical” Israeli leadership, Israel’s Channel 10 news said.

Kerry was to have met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later this week in Rome, but Netanyahu cancelled his planned trip amid the current regional tensions.

The two are also to talk Sunday about the US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks which resumed in late July. This will mark Kerry’s first visit to the region since the resumption.

The Palestinians have complained that Israel is not negotiating seriously on all core issues, and focusing overwhelmingly on border concerns. Israeli officials have said that the current instability in the region underlines Israel’s demand to retain a military presence in the Jordan Valley under any accord.

The Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway will be closed to traffic in the Sunday morning hours when Kerry is expected.

On Saturday, after days of intense negotiations, the United States and Russia reached an agreement on a framework to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons by mid-2014 and impose UN penalties if the Assad government fails to comply.

The deal, announced by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, includes what Kerry called “a shared assessment” of the weapons stockpile, and a timetable and measures for Assad to comply.

Kerry said the Syrian regime must submit a full inventory of its stockpile within a week.

The deal calls for all components of the chemical weapons program to be removed from the country or destroyed by mid-2014.