U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are meeting Thursday in Geneva to work on Russia's plan to end the threat posed by Syria's chemical weapons.
Neither Kerry nor Lavrov have given any details of the proposal. It involves President Bashar al-Assad's government giving up all of its chemical weapons to the United Nations to have them destroyed. At the same time, the United States would set aside plans for a military strike.
Ahead of the meeting, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed in a New York Times opinion piece the need to work through the United Nations and not conduct unilateral military action in Syria.
President Barack Obama has blamed Syrian forces for using poison gas against civilians last month near Damascus. He says U.S. ships in the Mediterranean region are holding their current positions, to keep pressure on the Syrians to live up to any agreement.
Kerry has said reaching any agreement to remove the chemical-weapons threat in Syria will be "exceedingly difficult."