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The U.S-Russia plan to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons is drawing attention to Israel's own suspected chemical stockpile and could raise pressure on the Jewish state to come clean about its capabilities. Israel signed the landmark international treaty banning the production or use of chemical weapons two decades ago, but it is among a handful if nations that have never ratified the deal. ...

Whether we are talking about respect for a nation or for an individual, nothing undermines respect more than duplicity -- saying one thing and acting differently. I think it is a big reason why President Barack Obama's Tuesday speech to the nation, in which he attempted to explain why he has proposed military action in Syria, fell so flat. The president cast his rationale for taking action in moral terms; he said a targeted strike against Syria would warn against the future use of poison gas, which killed 1,429 people in an Aug. 21 attack. But the very dubious moral...

Canada’s foreign minister John Baird is calling Syria’s offer to begin providing information on its chemical arsenal 30 days after it signs an international convention banning such weapons “ridiculous and absurd.” Baird said Syrian President Bashar Assad could not be given extra time. Baird said: “This is a man who up until a week ago denied that they had any such weapons.” …

Russia-North Korea:Russian officials said they interpret the white vapor plume at Yongbyon to signify testing of the electric power generation system, not a sign the reactor is nearing operational status. Their main point is that the reactor is in such a state of disrepair that it cannot be started safely. Comment:The Russian argument is a good reason to not try to restart the reactor, but it does not mean the North Koreans won't try just the same. Russia-Iran:Update.The Office of the Russian President said the report in yesterday'sKommersantwas untrue. At this time President Putin is not planning to offer the...

In March 2012, President Obama whispered to placeholder Russian president Dmitri Medvedev that he needed "space" on matters like missile defense until 2013. "After my election, I'll have more flexibility," the president blurted into an unsuspected open microphone. "I will convey this information to Vladimir," Medvedev promised, managing not to smirk outwardly. Medvedev did not need to deliver the message. Obama has telegraphed his weakness in a thousand ways, starting with the "reset" that was premised on the idea that relations between Russia and the U.S. were frayed because we had been without the transformative leadership of Barack Hussein Obama....

An elite Syrian unit that runs the government's chemical arms program has been scattering the weapons to dozens of sites across the country, potentially complicating US plans for air strikes, the Wall Street Journal reported. The newspaper, citing unnamed US officials and lawmakers briefed on the intelligence, said on its website on Thursday that a secretive military group known as Unit 450 had been moving the stocks around for months to help avoid detection of the weapons. US and Israeli intelligence agencies and Middle Eastern officials still believe they know the location of most of the government's chemical weapons supply,...

I … don’t remember this being part of the offer. Obama had better run it past Putin right away to see how he wants the U.S. to respond. Syria will fulfil an initiative to hand over its chemical weapons only when the United States stops threatening to strike Syria, RIA news agency quoted President Bashar al-Assad as saying in a television interview… “When we see the United States really wants stability in our region and stops threatening, striving to attack, and also ceases arms deliveries to terrorists, then we will believe that the necessary processes can be finalized,” he was...

Apparently, once again with respect to Syria, the White House was caught off guard by events they are frantically reacting to instead of shaping. Speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper, a White House official publicly responded to Russian President Vladmir Putin's New York Times op-ed with the admission that Putin "now owns" and has "fully asserted ownership" of America's current foreign policy focal point; pushing Syria to surrender its chemical weapons: “That’s all irrelevant,” the White House official said in response [to Putin's op-ed]. “He put this proposal forward and he’s now invested in it. That’s good. That’s the best possible...

Syrian rebels claim that the army of President Bashar Assad again used poison gas in an attack on rebel forces in the Damascus area Thursday, an Israel Radio report said. The report was based on rebel sources, who said the attack took place in the Jobar neighborhood of the capital. The rebel sources said they could not tell what kind of chemical weaponry had been used, but that it was a poison gas of some kind, and was causing injuries, including breathing difficulties.

Russia's proposal for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to place his chemical weapons under international supervision and then destroy them is quickly gaining steam. Assad's government accepted the plan this morning. A few hours later, President Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande announced that they'd seriously explore the proposal. It already has the backing of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and a growing number of influential lawmakers from both parties. There's just one problem: the plan would be nearly impossible to actually carry out. Experts in chemical weapons disposal point to a host of challenges....

“Undoubtedly, all of this makes sense and can function, can work, only if we hear that the American side and those who support the United States in this sense rule out the use of force,” Mr. Putin said in televised remarks on Tuesday night, “because it is difficult to make any country — Syria or any other country, any other government in the world — unilaterally disarm if the use of force is being prepared against it.” He noted that Syria had “a certain arsenal of chemical weapons,” and that “the Syrians have always regarded it as an alternative to...

The U.N. Security Council has canceled a meeting on a resolution aimed at securing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles. The closed consultations had been scheduled for 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) Tuesday. Australian Ambassador Gary Guinlan says in a Twitter message that the meeting was canceled “following withdrawal of the request for consultations.” Council diplomats said Russia asked for the meeting and then withdrew its request. There were no other details.

The debate surrounding a chemical attack in Syria last month shifted Monday to a proposal for the Assad regime to surrender its chemical weapons arsenal to avoid a U.S. military strike—but little has been said about its alleged possession of even-deadlier biological weapons. Syria has been suspected for decades of having an undeclared biological warfare (BW) program, although whether this includes actual stockpiles of munitions is unclear. Syria signed the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), but has never ratified it. …

International pressure has been building for a military strike on Syria in the wake of an alleged chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb. The West has laid the blame at the feet of President Assad, as UN experts collected chemical samples on-site. Tuesday, September 10 19:14 GMT: The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Secretary of State John Kerry and Minister Sergey Lavrov have agreed on a possible bilateral meeting soon to discuss initiative on Syria’s chemical weapons. “The two have agreed to work together, including the possibility of holding a bilateral meeting in the coming days to discuss concrete...

Syria said on Tuesday it is ready to unveil and cease the production of chemical weapons, as Western powers prepared to discuss a Russian plan for the country to surrender its chemical arms. “We are ready to state where the chemical weapons are, to halt production of chemical weapons and show these installations to representatives of Russia, other countries and the U.N.,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in a statement sent to Russia's Interfax news agency. Muallem made the announcement a day after he had welcomed in Moscow the Russian proposal for placing chemical weapons under international control.

After collecting eyewitness testimonies and analyzing the likely weapons systems that were used to facilitate a chemical-weapons attack that targeted rebel-controlled suburbs in Damascus last month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday it believes it has enough evidence to prove that the Syrian government was responsible for the atrocity. HRW’s extensive investigation, which relied on expert analysis from chemical-weapons and arms specialists along with witnesses’ accounts, concluded that the surface-to-surface rocket systems used to carry out the attack, along with the large quantity of nerve agent that was deployed during the assault on Aug. 21, match up with equipment that...

The estimate shows that in 1983 the CIA had hard evidence that Israel possessed a chemical weapons stockpile of indeterminate size, including...almost certainly sarin. ...the CIA assessment suggests that the Israelis accelerated their research and development work on chemical weapons following the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. According to the report, U.S. intelligence detected "possible tests" of Israeli chemical weapons in January 1976, which, again, almost certainly took place somewhere in the Negev Desert. A former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer whom I interviewed recalled that at about this time, the National Security Agency captured communications showing that...

Syria on Tuesday said the government would take the deal proposed by Russia to turn over its chemical weapons cache to international control, the nation’s foreign minister said. “[Monday] we held a round of very fruitful negotiations with Russian Foreign Minister Serge[y] Lavrov and he put forward an initiative regarding chemical weapons. Already in the evening we accepted Russia’s initiative,” said Walid Muallem, the foreign minister, in a statement reported by Russian news and picked up by USA Today

(Headline only) Breaking News: Syria accepts Russian proposal to put chemical weapons under international control - Interfax

I’ve been thinking about this all night...It doesn’t make sense to me. Does anyone else feel the same way I do? Putin is very very quick, almost too quick, to offer the INternational control of weapons IMMEDIATELY after Kerry’s faux Paux. Why? I don't think in the least that he fears Obama, or even respects the man as his equal. So why would he make an offer that on the surface will ultimately make Obama look good esp in the eyes of the media, and make him looks like he caved to Obama's threats? Anyone over the age of 40...