U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, will meet in Geneva Thursday, each armed with a pack of weapons experts to discuss the next steps in a Syrian disarmament. Removing the chemical weapons–that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad now admits it possesses–in the midst of an ongoing bloody civil war will prove difficult, and President Obama has said he remains skeptical of Syria’s seriousness but is willing to give the diplomatic track a chance before pushing further for a U.S. military strike.
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who traveled to Geneva with Kerry, reported from the ground.
“We have a planeload of the top intelligence and weapons experts from the State Department and all the agencies and the Russians are bringing theirs,” she explained from Geneva. “What’s going to happen here is that we’re going to say ‘You show us where you think Assad’s weapons are and we’ll show you.” And supposedly, if they’re serious, they’re going to start trading intelligence on where the weapons are.”
MS NOW staff