KERRY: U.S., RUSSIA REACH AGREEMENT ON SYRIA CHEMICAL WEAPONS PLAN

After days of intense negotiations, the United States and Russia reached agreement Saturday on a framework to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons by the mid-2014 and impose U.N. penalties if the Assad government fails to comply.

The deal, announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, includes what Kerry called “a shared assessment” of the weapons stockpile, and a timetable and measures for Syrian President Bashar Assad to comply.

It was not immediately clear whether Syria had signed onto the agreement,...