Syria Promises to Abide by International Chemical Weapons Treaty

Wants US to back off with military threats

Syria said it would abide by an international treaty banning chemical weapons, even as President Bashar al-Assad set conditions that the U.S. lift its threat of military strikes and stop arming Syrian rebels.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, after effectively rejecting Assad's conditions yesterday, resumed the diplomacy in talks that started at 9:30 a.m. in Geneva today with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy for Syria.