United Nations peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi says the United States and Russia agree on the need to find a "creative solution" to bring Syria back from what he calls the brink.
Brahimi held three-way talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of a human rights meeting in Dublin Thursday.
Brahimi said there were no sensational decisions during their brief talks. But all agree that the situation in Syria is bad.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that intelligence shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may be considering using chemical weapons as rebel successes in the civil war put more and more pressure on his government.
The White House has warned Assad that using chemical gas against his own people would be a "red line" for the United States and bring serious consequences.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Maqdad has told Lebanese television that is Syria had chemical weapons, it would not use them against the Syrian people. He said the West is using threat of chemical weapons as an excuse to intervene.
"If Syria had chemical weapons, these weapons would definitely not be used against the people of Syria. We have strong fear of the existence of a conspiracy to use the weapons; by the United States and some European states, which might have supplied such weapons to terrorist organisations in Syria, in order to claim later that Syria is the one that used these weapons," he said.
