SECRETARY KERRY: Well, thank you very much, Foreign Minister Lavrov.
My privilege to be here with our delegation, and I want to thank you and your delegation
on behalf of all the people who hope that diplomacy can avoid military action, and we
thank you for coming quickly to Geneva in order to have this important conversation
that we will engage in.
Over one year ago, President Obama and President Putin directed high-level experts in our governments,
both of our governments, to work together to prepare contingencies involving Syria's
chemical weapons.
Foreign Minister Lavrov and I have been in regular contact about this issue since my
visit to Moscow earlier this year.
And as Foreign Minister Lavrov said to me in a phone conversation after St. Petersburg
and the meetings there, President Putin and President Obama thought it would be worthwhile
for us to work together to determine if there is life in this concept.
This challenge obviously took on grave urgency on August 21st when the Syrian regime used
chemical weapons in a massive and indiscriminate way against its own citizens.
President Obama and dozens of our partners believe that that action is unacceptable,
and we have in no uncertain terms made it clear that we cannot allow that to happen
again.
In light of what has happened, the world wonders and watches closely whether or not the Assad
regime will live up to its public commitments that it has made to give up their chemical
weapons and whether two of the world's most powerful nations can together take a critical
step forward in order to hold the regime to its stated promises.
I have seen reports that the Syrian regime has suggested that as part of the standard
process they ought to have 30 days to submit data on their technical - on their chemical
weapons stockpile.
We believe there is nothing standard about this process at this moment because of the
way the regime has behaved, because the - not only the existence of these weapons, but they
have been used.
And the words of the Syrian regime, in our judgment, are simply not enough, which is
why we've come here in order to work with the Russians and work with Sergey Lavrov and
his delegation here in order to make certain that this can, in fact, be achieved.
The United States and Russia have had and continue to have our share of disagreements
about the situation in Syria, including a difference as to the judgment we just offered
with respect to who may have done that.
But what's important as we come here is that there's much that we agree on.
We agree that on August 21st Syrian men, women, and children died grotesque deaths due to
chemical weapons.
We agree that no one anywhere at any time should employ chemical weapons.
And we agree that our joining together with the international community to eliminate stockpiles
of these weapons in Syria would be an historic moment for the multilateral nonproliferation
efforts.
We agree on those things.
We agree that it would help to save lives if we could accomplish this, that it would
reduce the threat to the region, that it would uphold the norm that was established here
in Geneva almost a century ago, and it would achieve the best of our - all of our aspirations
for curbing weapons of mass destruction.
Foreign Minister Lavrov and I have come to Geneva today to begin to test these propositions,
not just on behalf of each of our countries but on behalf of everybody who is interested
in a peaceful resolution.
So I welcome the distinguished Russian delegation and I am proud that at President Obama's direction
we have a delegation here which I lead of some of our nation's foremost chemical weapons
experts; people who've dedicated their lives every day to countering the proliferation
of these weapons and to bringing about their eventual elimination from this Earth.
The Russian delegation has put some ideas forward, and we're grateful for that.
We respect it.
And we have prepared our own principles that any plan to accomplish this needs to encompass.
Expectations are high.
They are high for the United States, perhaps even more so for Russia to deliver on the
promise of this moment.
This is not a game, and I said that to my friend Sergey when we talked about it initially.
It has to be real.
It has to be comprehensive.
It has to be verifiable.
It has to be credible.
It has to be timely and implemented in a timely fashion.
And finally, there ought to be consequences if it doesn't take place.
Diplomacy is and always has been President Obama's and this Administration's first resort,
and achieving a peaceful resolution is clearly preferable to military action.
President Obama has said that again and again.
Now, it's too early to tell whether or not these efforts will succeed, but the technical
challenges of trying to do this in the context of a civil war are obviously immense.
But despite how difficult this is, with the collaboration of our experts and only with
the compliance from the Assad regime, we do believe there is a way to get this done.
We have come here to define a potential path forward that we can share with our international
partners, and together we will test the Assad regime's commitment to follow through on its
promises.
We are serious - Mr. Foreign Minister, we are serious, as you are - about engaging in
substantive, meaningful negotiations even as our military maintains its current posture
to keep up the pressure on the Assad regime.
Only the credible threat of force and the intervention of President Putin and Russia
based on that has brought the Assad regime to acknowledge for the first time that it
even has chemical weapons and an arsenal, and it is now prepared to relinquish it.
President Obama has made clear that should diplomacy fail, force might be necessary to
deter and degrade Assad's capacity to deliver these weapons.
It won't get rid of them, but it could change his willingness to use them.
The best thing to do, we agree, is remove them altogether.
Our challenge here in Geneva is to test the viability of placing Assad's chemical weapons
under international control, removing them from Syria, and destroying them forever.
But the United States has also made clear that the deaths of more than 100,000 Syrians
and the displacement of millions either internally or as refugees remains a stain on the world's
conscience.
We all need to keep that in mind and deal with it.
And that is why Foreign Minister Lavrov and I continue to work with Joint Special Envoy
Brahimi and ourselves under the auspices of the Geneva communique.
The Foreign Secretary just mentioned this and his hopes.
We share those hopes that could foster a political solution to a civil war that undermines the
stability of the region, threatens our own national security interests, and compels us
to act.
That is our hope and that is what we fervently hope can come out of this meeting and these
negotiations.
Thank you very much.