BEIRUT — Syria’s government hailed as a “victory” a Russian-brokered deal that has averted U.S. strikes, while President Barack Obama defended a chemical weapons pact that the rebels fear has bolstered their enemy in the civil war.

President Bashar al-Assad’s jets and artillery hit rebel suburbs of the capital again on Sunday in an offensive that residents said began last week when Obama delayed air strikes in the face of opposition from Moscow and his own electorate.

Speaking of the U.S.-Russian deal, Syrian minister Ali Haidar told Moscow’s RIA news agency: “These agreements … are a victory for Syria, achieved thanks to our Russian friends.”

Though not close to Assad, Ali was the first Syrian official to react to Saturday’s accord in Geneva by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Bridging an angry East-West rift over Syria, they agreed to back a nine-month U.N. program to destroy Assad’s chemical arsenal.

The deal has put off the threat of air strikes Obama made after poison gas killed hundreds of Syrians on Aug. 21, although he has stressed that force remains an option if Assad reneges. U.S. forces remain in position. Russia still opposes military action but now backs possible U.N. sanctions for noncompliance.

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, who has opposed military intervention in Syria, said, “This diplomatic solution may accomplish what military intervention never would have: the complete destruction of Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons. I congratulate Secretary Kerry and the Obama administration on this major diplomatic achievement..”

U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said, “I’m very pleased to learn that diplomatic efforts between the United States and Russia have produced a framework for the expeditious identification and elimination of Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal. A diplomatic solution to eliminate his chemical weapons capabilities is preferable to a military one, and is doubly important because it would also remove the possibility of the weapons falling into opposition hands if Assad loses power. While there are certainly challenges ahead in implementing and enforcing the deal, I am nonetheless encouraged by the developments and am looking forward to the process moving forward.”

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said, “I welcome the news from Geneva that Russia and the United States have reached a tentative agreement that could lead to the elimination of Assad’s chemical weapons. If the plan is fully and verifiably implemented, it would be more effective than the limited military attack originally proposed by the president. I believe that the tough questions that many of us raised about the president’s planned military strikes encouraged the administration to explore non-military alternatives. It is now incumbent upon the Assad regime to keep its commitments and cease its brutal assaults on the Syrian people.”

However, two senior Republican senators said Saturday they were not as pleased with the deal, saying that the agreement would afford Assad months to “delay and deceive” while more die in that country’s war.

“It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama administration is being led into it by Bashar Assad and (Russian President) Vladimir Putin,” Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in a statement.

French President Francois Hollande called for a U.N. resolution on Syria backed by the threat of punitive action to be voted by the end of this week. Hollande also said the option of military strikes must remain on the table.

Kerry, visiting Israel, responded to widespread doubts about the feasibility of the “the most far-reaching chemical weapons removal ever” by insisting the plan could work. And he and Obama sought to reassure Israelis the decision to hold fire on Syria does not mean Iran can pursue nuclear weapons with impunity.

Obama embraced the Syria disarmament proposal floated last week by Putin after his plan for U.S. military action hit resistance in Congress. Lawmakers feared an open-ended new entanglement in the Middle East and were troubled by the presence of al Qaeda followers among Assad’s opponents.

Obama dismissed critics of his quick-changing tactics on Syria for focusing on “style” not substance. And while thanking Putin for pressing his “client the Assad regime” to disarm, he chided Russia for questioning Assad’s guilt over the gas attack.

Responding to concerns, notably in Israel, that a display of American weakness toward Assad could encourage his Iranian backers to develop nuclear weapons, Obama said Tehran’s nuclear programme was a “far larger issue” for him than Assad’s toxins.

“They shouldn’t draw a lesson, that we haven’t struck, to think we won’t strike Iran,” he told ABC television, disclosing he had exchanged letters with Iran’s new president. “On the other hand, what they should draw from this lesson is that there is the potential of resolving these issues diplomatically.”

Obama had no lack of critics, however, at home and abroad.

U.S. Republican Rep. Mike Rogers was sceptical the deal will work. “If the president believes, like I do, that a credible military force helps you get a diplomatic solution, they gave that away in this deal. I’m really concerned about that,” Rogers said.

Even Obama’s Democratic supporters are wary. If Assad scorns his commitments, said Sen. Robert Menendez, “We’re back to where we started — except Assad has bought more time on the battlefield and has continued to ravage innocent civilians.”

Rebels dismiss talks

Syrian National Reconciliation Minister Ali said Syria welcomed the deal: “They have prevented a war against Syria by denying a pretext to those who wanted to unleash it.”

He also echoed Kerry and Lavrov in saying it might help Syrians “sit round one table to settle their internal problems”.

But rebels, calling the international focus on poison gas a sideshow, have dismissed talk the arms pact might herald peace talks and said Assad has stepped up an offensive with ordinary weaponry now that the threat of U.S. air strikes has receded.

A spokesman for the opposition Syrian National Coalition repeated that it wanted world powers to prevent Assad from using his air force, tanks and artillery on civilian areas.

“Assad is effectively being rewarded for the use of chemical weapons,” Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center wrote in the Atlantic magazine. “Now, he can get away with nearly anything — as long as he sticks to using good old conventional weapons.”

International responses to the accord were also guarded. Western governments, wary of Assad and familiar with the years frustrated U.N. weapons inspectors spent in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, noted the huge technical difficulties in destroying one of the world’s biggest chemical arsenals in the midst of civil war.

Iran hailed a U.S. retreat from “extremist behaviour” and welcomed its “rationality”. Israel said the deal would be judged on results. China, which like Russia opposes U.S. readiness to use force against sovereign states, was glad of the renewed role for the U.N. Security Council, where Beijing too has a veto.

The Syrian government has formally told the United Nations it will adhere to a treaty banning chemical weapons. The U.S.-Russian framework agreement calls for the United Nations to enforce the removal of existing stockpiles by the middle of next year.

Bombardments

Air strikes, shelling and ground attacks on Damascus suburbs on Sunday backed up statements from Assad’s supporters and opponents that he is back on the offensive after a lull in which his troops took up defensive positions, expecting U.S. strikes.

“It’s a clever proposal from Russia to prevent the attacks,” said an Assad supporter from the port city of Tartous.

An opposition activist in Damascus echoed disappointment among rebel leaders: “Helping Syrians would mean stopping the bloodshed,” he said. Poison gas is estimated to have killed only hundreds of the more than 100,000 dead in a war that has also forced a third of the population to flee their homes since 2011.

Russia says it is not specifically supporting Assad — though it has provided much of his weaponry. Its concern, it says, is to prevent Assad’s Western and Arab enemies from imposing their will on a sovereign state. And Moscow, like Assad, highlights the role of al Qaeda-linked Islamists among the rebel forces.

Their presence, and divisions among Assad’s opponents in a war that has inflamed sectarian passions across the region, have tempered Western support. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged followers on Sunday not to cooperate with other Syrian rebels.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition elected a moderate Islamist on Saturday as prime minister of an exile government — a move some members said was opposed by Western powers who want to see an international peace conference bring the warring sides together to produce a compromise transitional administration.

Previous attempts to revive peace efforts begun last year at Geneva have foundered on the bitter hostilities among Syrians.

Newly elected coalition leader Ahmad Tumeh, a moderate Islamist, told Reuters he wanted to form a government that could bring order to rebel-held areas and to challenge al Qaeda there.

Schedule

Assad has just a week to begin complying with the U.S.-Russian deal by handing over a full account of his chemical arsenal. He must allow U.N.-backed inspectors from the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to complete their initial on-site checks by November.

Under the Geneva pact, the United States and Russia will back a U.N. enforcement mechanism. But its terms are not yet set. Russia is unlikely to support the military option that Obama said he was still ready to use: “If diplomacy fails, the United States remains prepared to act,” he said on Saturday.

Assad told Russian state television last week that his cooperation was dependent on an end to such threats and U.S. support for rebel fighters. But it seems likely that Moscow can prevail on him to comply, at least initially, with a deal in which Putin has invested considerable personal prestige.

While Lavrov stressed in Geneva that the pact did not include any automatic use of force in the event of Syria’s failure to comply, Western leaders said only the credible prospect of being bombed had persuaded Assad to agree to give up weaponry which he had long denied ever having, let alone using.

Kerry and Lavrov plan to meet the U.N. envoy on Syria at the end of the month to review progress toward peace talks. Lavrov spoke of an international peace conference as early as October.