US Secretary of State John Kerry meets with his British and French counterparts in Paris on Monday to fine-tune the deal to avoid military action against Syria in retaliation for the chemical weapon attack on civilians.

China signaled its approval, and Kerry appeared at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who cautiously praised the agreement.

“We hope that the understandings reached between the US and Russia on Syrian chemical weapons will yield results,” Netanyahu said, “Those understandings will be judged by the results - the total destruction of all the chemical weapon stocks that the Syrian regime used against its own citizens.”

A Syrian minister calls it a “victory” and plans to cooperate with the terms of the plan negotiated by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.  Damascus says it is already compiling the list of its entire chemical weapons cache, which is due within a week according to the agreement.  Syria must be fully divested of these types of weapons by mid-2014.

The US had threatened to attack Syria because of the 21 August attack, with backing from France and a handful of other nations.  But if some governments were cooperating in an ad hoc coalition, people often were not.  The deal gives US President Barack Obama a much needed “out” on military action, because polls show Americans did not want to get involved in another war in the Mideast.  The UK Parliament voted to block British forces from getting involved.