"Syrian warplanes and artillery bombarded rebel suburbs of the capital on Sunday after the United States agreed to call off military action in a deal with Russia to remove President Bashar Assad's chemical weapons," the Jerusalem Post reports.
"President Barack Obama said he may still launch US strikes if Damascus fails to follow a nine-month UN disarmament plan drawn up by Washington and Assad's ally Moscow. But a reluctance among US voters and Western allies to engage in a new Middle East war, and Russian opposition, has put any attacks on hold," the article reads.
"Syrian rebels, calling the international focus on poison gas a sideshow, dismissed talk the arms pact might herald peace talks and said Assad had stepped up an offensive with ordinary weaponry now that the threat of US air strikes had receded."
"The Syrian government has formally told the United Nations it will adhere to a treaty banning chemical weapons but made no comment in the day since US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov patched over bitter differences between Washington and Moscow to set a framework for the United Nations to remove Assad's banned arsenal by mid-2014," the Jerusalem Post reports.
"Turkey has voiced a skeptical optimism after the United States and Russia agreed on a plan to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons by the middle of 2014," Hurriyet Daily News reports.
"Turkey welcomes, as a matter of principle, the dismantling of all weapons of mass destruction in the world and in our region, the chemical weapons in particular. Therefore, the agreement reached today in Geneva between the United States and the Russian Federation regarding the chemical weapons possessed by the Syrian regime was welcomed as a positive step and assessed carefully," the news agency cites a written statement issued by the Turkish Foreign Ministry on September 14 as saying.
"After three days of talks in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded that al-Assad account for his secret stockpile within a week and let international inspectors eliminate all the weapons by the middle of next year."
