Syria’s declared chemical arms arsenal has been completely destroyed, capping more than two years of delicate work, the global watchdog charged with eliminating the world’s toxic weapons said on Tuesd
Syria’s declared chemical arms arsenal has been completely destroyed, capping more than two years of delicate work, the global watchdog charged with eliminating the world’s toxic weapons said on Tuesday.
“One hundred per cent has been destroyed,” Malik Ellahi, the spokesperson for the UN-backed Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said.
But the Hague-based organisation still remains deeply concerned by reports of the use of sarin and mustard gas in the country, as well as deadly chlorine gas in Syria’s brutal civil war.
Under the terms of a historic deal hammered out in September 2013 by US secretary of state John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Syria finally admitted to possessing over 1,000 tonnes of chemical weapons after years of denials and agreed to hand over the whole stockpile for destruction.
The deal averted threatened US airstrikes against Damascus after a sarin gas attack on rebel-held areas near the capital that were blamed by the West and the Opposition on the regime in August 2013, in which hundreds of civilians were killed.
Under the agreement, Syria’s entire chemical arsenal had been due to be eliminated by June 30, 2014, and all chemical effluent by December 31, 2014.
But the timetable slipped badly amid protractions by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and complications posed by the civil war about to enter its fifth year.
The last remaining vestiges of the declared stockpile — some 75 cylinders of highly-corrosive hydrogen fluoride — were destroyed by the US firm Veolia at its treatment plant Port Arthur in Texas, the OPCW said.
“This completes destruction of all chemical weapons declared by the Syrian Arab Republic,” it said in a statement issued on Monday.
