jill dougherty live from st. petersburg. >>> a plan to authorize a military strike on syria faces an uncertain battle here at home. president obama won the first battle of resolution limiting a military response passed in the senate foreign relations committee by a vote of 10-7. but it's fate in the house is quite uncertaintop chris lawrence is live now. good morning, chris. >> good morning, carol. while the president travels overseas, his top officials are still here in washington trying to make the case to congress to authorize that military action in syria. in just about 20, 25 minutes from now, there will be the start of one of the last behind the closed doors classified briefing for members of congress, sort of a last-ditch attempt to try to close the deal among those who may be on the fence. this is coming just one day after the secretaries of defense and state faced a very tough crowd at the house. this is the hard sell from the inner circle to take action. >> this is not the time to be spectators to slaug

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let's bring in foreign affairs correspondent jill dougherty watching what's going on. jill, what are you hearing about this report? >> well, wolf, those reports are coming in from the russian wires and they're coming from kazakhstan where the minister lavrov, foreign minister is currently. he will soon be on his way to geneva to meet with secretary kerry. and they are saying that a plan, no details yet on that plan, has been turned over to the united states, and it has a plan of implementing that initiative for putting the chemical weapons under international control. now, just a couple of minutes ago, in the briefing at the white house, jay carney outlined three parts that would go into that. he said they'd have to be secured, they would have to be moved from assad's control, and then ultimately they would have to be destroyed. now, we do know that secretary kerry and lavrov also will have technical experts who will be sitting down in geneva when they meet on thursday. they'll be going over all of these details because after all, this is a complex thing to do, and even

our jill dougherty joins us from washington, d.c., on the phone. i beg your pardon, she's in moscow. she's been traveling from washington to moscow. jill, this is a very big development that the -- the russians have made. this overture. can you explain a little about how this came about. >> well, there was a question that was asked of secretary kerry -- what could assad do to avert military action. and secretary kerry said he could turn over his weapons, put them under international -- chemical weapons, put them under international control and do it within a week. then he added, he'll never do it, and basically assad can't do it. so at that point, the -- just about an hour ago here in moscow, the foreign minister, sergei lavrov, called a very unexpected news conference. it was almost like a briefing in which he issued a statement and said russia is going to urge syria to put their weapons under international control if that will avert military strikes. and he added -- this is again the russian prime minister, saying i don't know whether syria will a

>> jill dougherty reporting live from moscow, thank you. >>> still to come in "the newsroom," relying on diplomacy. will it really work? i'll talk to a former defense secretary under president clinton. we'll be right back. humans. even when we cross our t's and dot our i's, we still run into problems. namely, other humans. which is why at liberty mutual insurance, auto policies come with new car replacement and accident forgiveness if you qualify. see what else comes standard at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? >>> president obama's pressing the pause button asking congress to postpone a vote on military action against syria while the russians try to work out a diplomatic plan but there's no telling how long it will take for syria to give up its chemical weapons if it does it at all. >> it's too early to tell whether this offer will succeed. in any agreement, it must verify that at sad regime keeps its commitments. but this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force, particularly becaus

want to go to moscow where jill dougherty is covering the development here. stand there was an interview that bashar al assad gave to russian television, russia 24, making some news here. what's the headline, jill? >> reporter: well, i'd say that the first part is, he says he will be handing over documents to the united nations and also to the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons, he will carry through the processes, give information, et cetera, and sign the agreement, the convention on the prohibition but if you look closely, he also says that these mechanisms will not be carried out unilaterally and that syria will sign these documents but this bilateral process is based, first of all, on the united states stopping its policy of threatening syria. and to the degree that the russian proposal is accepted. now, that could be a sticking point. again, we are not the people who are negotiating this, but if you remember, president putin was saying just i believe it was yesterday, you can't expect syria to disarm if the united states continues to hol

let's bring in our foreign affairs correspondent jill dougherty in moscow watching what's going on. jill, russia clearly taking the lead role right now in getting syrian president bashar al assad to not only put his chemical weapons under control, but eventually destroy them. and bashar al assad is now speaking out. >> reporter: right. he was in an interview on russia 24 television and in that interview he went through the stages, he said, wolf, they will hand over documents to the united nations and to the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons, that they'll sign the convention on that, that it would go into effect within a month of signing, giving information about you know the stores of chemical weapons that they have. but there's a part in there, a caveat, where he says, when we see that the united nations really wants stability in our region and has not -- will stop threatening and striving to attack and stop providing weapons to the terrorists, then we'll consider that we can carry out these necessary processes to the end. in other words, what he's saying is, we'l

>> thanks to jill dougherty for that. negative feedback from voters about a possible strike against syria, and that's making some lawmakers nervous about next year's midterm election and the administration nervous about winning the syria vote. let's bring in cnn's athena jones. athena? >> reporter: hi, joe. that's right, it's looking like a tough road ahead for the white house. while a lot of members of congress say they're undecided, quite a few of them have already said they plan to vote against military action. things got heated at senator john mccain's town hall in phoenix thursday. >> opposed to having a single american boot on the ground -- >> not good enough! >> not a good enough call! >> you don't respect our view! we didn't send you to get war for us! we send you to stop the wars! >> we cannot afford to shed more syrian blood. >> reporter: as mccain, who supports missile strikes in syria, tried to convince a skeptical audience that taking military action is in america's national interests. the event shows the tou