Via JPost:

A US government official told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that a Russian proposal urging Syria to place its chemical weapons arsenal under international control, in order to avoid a US strike, would be ignored.

“There’s no mechanism to implement what the Russians are proposing,” said the official.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is the only organization that has monitoring power over chemical arms, the official noted. But the OPCW only has jurisdiction over signatories of the Chemical Weapons Convention, of which Syria is not a member. And the OPCW does not tolerate the existence of such weapons, but oversees their destruction, which the Russians have not proposed.

The Russian government was responding to comments made off the cuff by US Secretary of State John Kerry during a press availability with British Foreign Minister William Hague on Monday.

“He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week— turn it over, all of it,” Kerry said, throwing up his hands in London. “But he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously.”