Diplomacy better than armed hit on Syria, Obama tells US

Soon after Syria agreed to a Russia-promoted proposal to neutralise its chemical weapons, President Barack Obama asked Congress on Tuesday to delay voting on US military action against the Bashar al-Assad regime over its use of chemical weapons on suspected rebels earlier this month.

The desperate efforts at a diplomatic compromise to avoid armed strikes continued even as the civil war resumed in earnest, with Assad's jets again bombing rebel positions in the capital Damascus.

Obama said in a televised address that Russia's plan to place Syria's chemical weapons under international control must be given a chance. But he added that it was too early to tell if the initiative would succeed. He vowed to keep US military forces at the ready to strike if diplomacy fails.

He said he had asked the US Congress to delay a vote on authorising military action while Washington and its allies try to pass a United Nations resolution requiring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give up the weapons in a verifiable way.

In a sign of how hard that will be, Russian President Vladimir Putin – a staunch ally of Assad's regime -said earlier that the chemical weapons plan would only succeed if Washington and its allies rule out military action.

In what amounted to the most explicit, high-level admission by Syria that it has chemical weapons, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moualem said in a statement shown on Russian state television that his country was committed to the Russian initiative.

"We want to join the convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons. We are ready to observe our obligations in accordance with that convention, including providing all information about these weapons," Moualem said.

"We are ready to declare the location of the chemical weapons, stop production of the chemical weapons, and show these (production) facilities to representatives of Russia and other United Nations member states."

Moscow has previously vetoed three UN Security Council resolutions that would have condemned the Syrian government over the conflict.

US officials said Kerry would meet Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Thursday for further talks.