Weapons plan 'would halt US strike'

A possible diplomatic solution to avoid a US military strike has opened up as Syria swiftly welcomed a suggestion to turn over all of its chemical weapons for destruction under international control.

US president Barack Obama said the proposal could be "potentially a significant breakthrough", but he remained sceptical that Syria would follow through.

The White House pressed ahead with efforts to persuade the US Congress to approve a military strike and Mr Obama said the developments were doubtless due in part to the "credible possibility" of that action. US officials insisted that Syrian president Bashar Assad's government must be held accountable for using chemical weapons regardless of what happened to its stocks.

But the diplomatic opening could provide Mr Obama with a way out of a messy political and foreign policy situation. It followed a remarkable chain of events that started with a suggestion from secretary of state John Kerry, followed by a proposal from Russia and immediate endorsement by the United Nations secretary general.

Mr Obama told NBC News in an interview that he was taking a statement from Damascus welcoming the idea "with a grain of salt initially", but said he would "absolutely" halt a US military strike if Syria's stockpiles were successfully secured. "My objective here has always been to deal with a very specific problem," Mr Obama told ABC News. "If we can do that without a military strike, that is overwhelmingly my preference."

The suggestion to secure the chemical weapons "could potentially be a significant breakthrough," the President told NBC News in another interview. "But we have to be sceptical because this is not how we've seen them operate over the last couple of years."

Mr Kerry told reporters in London that Assad could resolve the crisis surrounding the use of chemical weapons by surrendering control of "every single bit" of his arsenal to the international community by the end of the week.

Hours later, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov promised to push its ally Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control and then dismantle them quickly to avert US strikes. Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem immediately embraced the proposal.

Then in quick succession, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon urged acceptance, British prime minister David Cameron said the idea was worth exploring and French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said it "deserves close examination". Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said any move by Syria to surrender its chemical weapons would be an "important step".

That seemed to raise prospects for avoiding an expansion of the Syrian civil war and spokesmen said the Obama administration would take a "hard look" at the proposal. But Mr Obama cast Russia's proposal as a direct result of the pressure being felt by Syria because of the threat of a US strike and warned that he would not allow the idea to be used as a stalling tactic.