The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution on Friday that demands the eradication of Syria's chemical weapons but does not threaten automatic punitive action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government if it does not comply.
The unanimous vote by the 15-member Security Council capped weeks of intense diplomacy between Russia and the United States. It was based on a deal between the two countries reached in Geneva earlier this month following an August 21 sarin nerve gas attack on a Damascus suburb that killed hundreds.
The U.S.-Russia deal averted punitive U.S. military action against Assad's government, which Washington blamed for the August attack. The Syrian government and its ally, Russia, blamed anti-government rebels for the attack.
One provision of the resolution, described by council diplomats as significant, formally endorses a plan for a political transition in Syria agreed on at an international conference in Geneva in June 2012.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said after the vote that the big powers hoped to hold a peace conference on Syria in mid-November in Geneva.
He told the council the plan to eradicate Syria's chemical weapons was "not a license to kill with conventional weapons."
"As we mark this important step, we must never forget that the catalog of horrors in Syria continues with bombs and tanks, grenades and guns," he said. "A red light for one form of weapons does not mean a green light for others."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the vote showed that "actions have consequences."
"Our original objective was to degrade and deter Syria's chemical weapons capability. And the option of military force that President Obama has kept on the table could have achieved that. But tonight's resolution accomplishes even more - through peaceful means, it will for the first time seek to eliminate entirely a nation's chemical weapons capability," he said.
