U.S. Expects Syrian Stockpile Destroyed Ahead of Schedule (VIDEO)

The United States expects Syria's chemical weapons to be destroyed "even faster than the very ambitious goal" of June 30 set in the U.S.-Russian agreement reached in Geneva in September, according to top U.S. negotiator Thomas Countryman.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

The United States expects Syria's chemical weapons to be destroyed "even faster than the very ambitious goal" of June 30 set in the U.S.-Russian agreement reached in Geneva in September, top U.S. negotiator Thomas Countryman says on this week's episode of "Conversations with Nicholas Kralev."

Countryman, who is the assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, also says that U.S. and Russian officials met repeatedly over two years before the Geneva negotiations to work out the basic details of how the Syrian chemical program would be dismantled in the opportunity presented itself.

A Foreign Service officer since 1982, Countryman explains how Washington reconciles its attempts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction with its conventional arms sales worth tens of billions of dollars a year.

Watch the full episode

MORE EPISODES

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot