BEIRUT: More than half of Syria’s declared chemical weapons arsenal has been shipped out or destroyed within the country, the head of the international team overseeing the disarmament process said yesterday.
Sigrid Kaag, head of the joint mission of the United Nations and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said 54 percent of the toxins had been removed or eliminated.
The process, which President Bashar Al Assad’s government agreed to after a chemical attack killed hundreds of people around Damascus last year, is months behind schedule but Kaag said the new momentum “would allow for timely completion”.
Syria has already missed a February 5 deadline to hand over or destroy all 1,300 tonnes of chemical agents which it declared last year. Last week it missed a deadline to destroy a dozen production and storage facilities.
Syrian authorities, battling a three-year uprising and insurgency against Assad’s rule, blame security problems for the delays in bringing the chemicals through contested territory to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.
Last month Syria said there were two attempted attacks on convoys transporting chemical weapons, and two storage sites remain inaccessible due to the civil war.
Lengthy delays at the start of the year have left Syria several months behind schedule and it risks missing a June 30 deadline for the chemicals to be destroyed. It has proposed an April 27 target to complete the removal of the chemicals.
The OPCW said another consignment of ‘Priority 1’ chemicals, considered the most dangerous, was delivered to Latakia yesterday — the 11th to be transported out of Syria.
More than one-third of the Priority 1 chemicals have now left the country, it said, including all of Syria’s declared mustard gas stocks.
REUTERS
