MOSCOW - The Syrian government has accepted a Russian proposal to put its chemical weapons under international control to “stave off” a possible U.S. aggression, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on Tuesday.

“We held a round of very effective talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday. He proposed a chemical weapons initiative and we accepted the Russian initiative later that evening,” al-Moualem said when meeting with State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin.

According to the diplomat, Syria made the decision in order to “stave off an American aggression,” Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.U.S. President Barack Obama has been seeking Congressional approval for military actions against Syria for an alleged Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack outside the Syrian capital, which reportedly killed at least 1,429 people, including 426 children. The Syrian government has denied the allegation.Also on Tuesday, the Kremlin admitted President Vladimir Putin and Obama discussed the possibility of placing Syrian chemical weapons under international control during last week’s Group of Twenty (G20) summit in St. Petersburg.

According to Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the two leaders discussed the proposal during their brief meeting on the sidelines of the two-day summit.

The spokesman did not say who has initiated the discussion nor did he reveal the details of the Putin-Obama talks.Lavrov made that proposal public on Monday during his meeting with his visiting Syrian counterpart Walid al   Moualem.Russia urged the Syrian government not only to put its chemical weapons under international control, but also to agree on their destruction and on full-fledged participation of the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). (Xinhua)