JNN 16 Sept 2013 Damascus : In the country’s first response to the U.S.-Russia deal on Syria, a Syrian minister has declared the agreement a “victory” for his country and thanked Russia for orchestrating a chemical weapons deal to avert U.S. military action, Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported.

“We welcome these agreements. On the one hand, they will help Syrians come out of the crisis, and on the other hand, they prevented the war against Syria by having removed a pretext for those who wanted to unleash it,” National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar was quoted as saying on Sunday.

“This deal is the result of Russian diplomacy and the Russian leadership. It’s a victory for Syria that was achieved thanks to our Russian friends,” he said.

Haidar, speaking in Damascus, said the framework agreement would prepare the ground for peace talks between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the rebels.

The deal “provides international support for all the representatives of the Syrian people to sit down at one table and to resolve their internal problems at the next stage,” he said.

Haidar said that the deal “gives the opportunity to solve in the future all the problems of Syria, not only the problem of chemical weapons”.

It was the first Syrian reaction to the deal U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov clinched in Geneva on Saturday, under which Syria has a week to submit a list of its chemical weapons stocks and hand all of them over for destruction by mid-2014.

The two sides agreed that the UN Security Council, where Russia holds the right to veto any initiative, would take unspecified action if Syria violated the terms of the international convention banning chemical weapons.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he hoped the deal would result in the “complete destruction” of the arsenal and push the world to stop Iran from nuclear weapons armament. Netanyahu spoke before a planned meeting with Kerry, who has arrived in Israel to brief him on the accord, Al Jazeera reported.

U.S. president Barack Obama said that if the Assad government does not live up to the deal, “the United States remains prepared to act”.

In a separate interview with ABC’s “This week”, Obama said Russian President Vladimir Putin does not share U.S. “values” in Syria, and that Putin is protecting Assad, a leader the U.S. has said needs to leave power.

The United States and Russia reached agreement Saturday on a framework to secure Syria’s chemical weapons after days of intense negotiations in Geneva.

The two sides agreed on Saturday on a proposal to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, averting the possibility of any immediate U.S. military action against President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

According to Reuters, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the agreement after nearly three days of talks in Geneva.

Kerry said that under the pact, Syria must submit a “comprehensive listing” of its chemical weapons stockpiles within one week

He told a news conference with Lavrov that U.N. weapons inspectors must be on the ground in Syria no later than November. The goal, he said, was the complete destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons by the middle of 2014.

Kerry said that if Syria did not comply with the agreement, which must be finalized by the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, it would face consequences under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, the part that covers sanctions and military action.

There was no agreement on what those measures would be. U.S. President Barack Obama reserves the right to use military force in Syria, Kerry said.

“There’s no diminution of options,” Kerry said.

Lavrov said of the agreement: “There (is) nothing said about the use of force and not about any automatic sanctions.”

In Istanbul, the head of the opposition Syrian Supreme Military Council, General Selim Idris, said the rebels regarded the deal as a blow to their struggle to oust Assad. But they would cooperate to facilitate the work of any international inspectors on the ground, he told Reuters.

But another military council official, Qassim Saadeddine, said the opposite.

“Let the Kerry-Lavrov plan go to hell. We reject it and we will not protect the inspectors or let them enter Syria.”

The US-Russia deal could also pave the way for the resumption of peace talks to end the civil war, now in its third year. More than 100,000 people have been killed, and millions have fled to other countries or to safer areas within Syria