But a White House statement cautioned that the US expected Syria "to live up to its public commitments".

The US-Russian framework document stipulates that Syria must provide details of its stockpile within a week.

If Syria fails to comply, the deal could be enforced by a UN resolution.

China, France, the UK, the UN and Nato have all expressed satisfaction at the agreement.

In Beijing, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday that China "welcomes the general agreement between the US and Russia".

"This agreement will enable tensions in Syria to be eased," he said.

However, there has so far been no reaction from Damascus.

In the White House statement, President Obama said that the US-Russian deal "represents an important, concrete step toward the goal of moving Syria's chemical weapons under international control so that they may ultimately be destroyed".

However the president warned that while the US would continue working with Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the United Nations and others to ensure that destruction-or-removal process was verifiable, there would be "consequences should the Assad regime not comply with the framework".

"If diplomacy fails, the United States remains prepared to act," he said.

The Pentagon has backed up the president, saying on Saturday that America was still in position for military strikes.

Last-ditch option

The US says the Syrian regime killed hundreds in a gas attack last month.

The government of Bashar al-Assad denies the allegations and has accused the rebels of carrying out the attack on 21 August.

Syria recently agreed to join the global Chemical Weapons Convention, and on Saturday the UN said it would come under the treaty from 14 October.

In a joint news conference in Geneva with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US Secretary of State John Kerry warned President Assad that there must be nothing less than full compliance by his government.

Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov said if Syria failed to comply, then a UN resolution would be sought under Chapter VII of the UN charter, which allows for the use of force.

However the Russian foreign minister was eager to make clear that force remained a last-ditch option.

"Naturally, no use of force is mentioned in these agreed approaches. Nor are any automatic sanctions mentioned. Any violations must be convincingly and unambiguously proven in the UN Security Council," he said.

Russia and the US have agreed on an assessment that the Syrian government possesses 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents and precursors, according to a US official.

The US believes the materials are located in 45 sites, all in government hands, half of which have useable quantities of chemical agents.

But it is thought that Russia does not agree on the number of sites, nor that they are all under the government's control.

'Unfettered access'

The agreement says initial on-site inspections must be completed by November.

It also stipulates that production equipment be destroyed by then, with "complete elimination of all chemical weapons material and equipment in the first half of 2014".

Mr Kerry outlined six points to the agreement which included Syria placing his chemical weapons under international control within a week and allowing weapons inspectors "immediate, unfettered access" to all sites so that whatever is found can be destroyed.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is visiting Beijing, said it was an "important advance" while British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement: "The onus is now on the Assad regime to comply with this agreement in full.

Analysts however remain divided.

Former British ambassador to Syria Sir Andrew Green said that although there would practical difficulties in implementing the deal, it was a diplomatic coup for Russia and "remarkably good news".

"[Firstly] it avoids military action, at least for the time being. Secondly it effectively removes the risk of any further use of chemical weapons by the regime. And thirdly and perhaps more importantly, it generates a dialogue and a co-operation with Russia," he said.

But former US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz - along with Republican senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham - was much more sceptical about the deal.

"Whatever gains it brings in terms of reducing the likelihood of additional chemical weapons use, it's clearly going to come at the price of taking off the table any serious US or western action against the Assad regime, which is a great victory for him and for his Russian and Iranian backers," Mr Wolfowitz said.

The military leader of the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army has rejected the deal and promised to continue fighting.

"There is nothing in this agreement that concerns us," said Gen Salim Idriss, describing it as a Russian initiative designed to gain time for the Syrian government.

Mr Kerry is due in Israel on Sunday to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and will then go to Paris to meet his French, British and Saudi counterparts.

Meanwhile there has been more fighting on the ground in Syria with clashes between government forces and rebels in the suburbs of Damascus, including some of the same areas affected by the 21 August attack.

More than 100,000 people have died since the uprising against President Assad began in 2011.

Millions of Syrians have fled the country, mostly to neighbouring nations. However, on Saturday, Italy's coastguard said more than 500 people, mostly Syrians, had been rescued off the Italian coast.

Millions more have been internally displaced within Syria.

Lisarh represented all that was good in Muzaffarnagar, dubbed the sugar bowl of India. It had the prosperity arising from the region's agrarian boom, and in its demographics, it had two communities living and working together in peace.

Haji Samiuddin, 65, of Lisarh represented all that Muzaffarnagar could have been. Having toiled in his fields for decades, he had ensured his children got a good education and saw them become owners of a saw mill. The family business was booming, and they were thinking of expanding.

Samiuddin and his wife are now dead, killed and dumped inside their burning home. And Lisarh, a village that was on the cusp of becoming a town, will now never be the place it was.

***

Samiuddin's eldest son Saeed Hassan remembers each detail of the last time he met his father. It was the morning of September 7. Things had been worsening, and they had heard of the Jat mahapanchayat being held that day in Sakheda, 35 km away. "The Jats have gathered in lakhs. Our friends are leaving and so should we. These are dangerous times," Hassan had said.

Samiuddin found this incredulous. "We have lived here all our lives, half the youngsters here have grown up sitting in my lap. Nobody will harm us here," he said.

Hassan says he told him that it was no longer about the villagers. "This is about politics and things we are not connected to."

However, Samiuddin insisted on staying. "You go son, you have your children to think about," he said. "You mother and I were born here and come what may, we will die here."

His mother Hamida, age 58, had added, "I cannot leave your father's side. Jahan bhi jao khuda to sab jagah hai (Wherever you go, god is everywhere)."

During her two-day trip Singh will meet foreign and home minister Madhav Prasad Ghimire, her counterpart Arjun Bahadur Thapa and other dignitaries and leaders of political parties.

This is Singh's first visit to Nepal since assuming charge last month. She is accompanied by a team of senior external affairs ministry officials.

The visit coincides with a debate among political parties on whether to hold election in November as announced or defer it to March-April as demanded by Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist.

The Mohan Baidya-led CPN-M has sought removal of the non-political interim government and holding of a round table conference of parties as pre-conditions to taking part in the election.

India wants polls to be held early to end the long political transition in Nepal and has agreed to provide all logistical support for the same including supply of 764 vehicles at a cost of Rs. 50 crore.

Lavrov referred to the section of the charter that provides for enforcement through sanctions, including the possible use of military force, saying that the Security Council expects Syria to comply fully with the demands of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Nevertheless, he cautioned that the Security Council would not accept reports of chemical weapons violations automatically but that they would be investigated.

"Of course it does not mean that each violation reported to the Security Council will be taken on trust. Each will be investigated. We will try to ensure authenticity," he said.

Lavrov praised the agreement between the US and Russia as a "consensus, a compromise and professional".

The Epsilon rocket is about half the size of Japan's previous generation of space vehicles, and uses artificial intelligence to perform safety checks.

Japan's space agency Jaxa says the Epsilon cost $37m (£23m) to develop, half the cost of its predecessor.

Epsilon launched from south-western Japan in the early afternoon.

Crowds of Japanese gathered to watch the launch, which was also broadcast on the internet.

It was carrying a telescope that is being billed by Jaxa as the world's first space telescope that will remotely observe planets including Venus, Mars and Jupiter from its Earth orbit.

Jaxa said the rocket successfully released the Sprint-A telescope as scheduled, about 1,000km (620 miles) above the Earth's surface.

Epsilon's predecessor, the M-5, was retired in 2006 because of spiralling costs.

Jaxa said the Epsilon was not only cheaper to produce, but also cheaper to launch than the M-5.

Because of its artificial intelligence, the new rocket needs only eight people at the launch site, compared with 150 people for earlier launches.

Japan's other recent space innovations included sending a talking robot to the International Space Station.

Smoke rises following an explosion at a smuggling tunnel dug beneath the Gaza-Egypt border in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on August 31, 2013. Egypt military has blown up more tunnels on the Egyptian side of the border with the besieged Gaza Strip, security sources say.