REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, WASHINGTON - Twenty-four hours after distancing itself from a Russian proposal to secure Syria's chemical weapons, the State Department moved Tuesday to claim co-ownership of the idea, which the US says President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin first discussed last year.

Russia's unexpected announcement came Monday after Secretary of State John Kerry said that Syrian President Bashar Assad could avert a US strike on his country by turning "over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week."

The State Department initially played down Kerry's remarks, which came at a news conference in London, dismissing them as a rhetorical flourish. But as support for the Russian idea snowballed, administration officials retooled their message.

By Tuesday, Kerry seemed to say it wasn't a verbal misstep at all. He told a House panel: "Yesterday, we challenged the regime to turn them over to the secure control of the international community so that they could be destroyed."

They also came as a surprise to Obama administration officials who were working on the Syria portfolio back in Washington. Confused, they scrambled to mount a damage-control message to tamp down the idea that the administration was making an offer to Assad to avoid military action.

Kerry told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the US was not going to "play games," but that if a serious proposal was presented, the US would be willing to review it, the official said, adding that the US had not seen any formal proposal. Kerry also made clear to Lavrov that the Russians could not go to the Syrians and say they were issuing their proposal jointly with the US.

Syria quickly embraced the idea. France, Britain and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed it. And by the end of the day, Obama, though expressing deep skepticism, declared it a "potentially a significant breakthrough" that could head off the threats of US air strikes.

The logistics of shutting down Assad's chemical weapons, however, are complicated and the State Department said Russia never presented a formal proposal. Kerry and Lavrov have spoken nine times since the Syrian crisis deepened after the Aug. 21 chemical attack in Syria that killed 1,400 people, including 400 children.

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