AMSTERDAM: Syria has made no progress in relinquishing a last batch of chemical weapons it says is inaccessible due to fighting, making it increasingly likely it will miss a final deadline to destroy its toxic stockpile, Britain said yesterday.
The British deputy representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) told delegates in The Hague that packaging material had arrived for the 100 tonnes of toxic chemicals. “But there is still no sign of any movement of chemicals, nor any indications of a time scale for a move,” said the statement.
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad agreed last year to hand over the country’s entire chemical weapons stockpile after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack near Damascus.
The agreement with Russia and the US averted Western military strikes threatened in response to the worst chemical weapons atrocity in decades, which has been blamed by Washington on Assad’s government. His government, which denies the allegation and blames the rebels, still has roughly 7 percent of 1,300 tonnes it declared to the OPCW, enough highly toxic material to carry out a large-scale attack.
It has missed several deadlines, most recently its own promise to hand over the remaining chemicals by April 27. It has also failed to destroy a dozen facilities that were part of the chemical weapons programme. Under the deal, Syria’s entire stockpile is supposed to have been destroyed by mid-2014, but “it is growing ever clearer that the 30 June deadline will not be met”, the British statement said.
A diplomat in the Middle East said the remaining chemicals have been packed in containers, but that the joint UN-OPCW operation overseeing the destruction still lacks access to the site.
Reuters
