Syria has given international experts additional details about its chemical weapons program that go beyond a Sept. 21 declaration of its poison gas arsenal, the UN said on Friday.
The team consists of experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, Netherlands, with help from UN personnel. The UN Security Council on Sept. 27 demanded the elimination of Syria’s chemical arsenal.
UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said that OPCW director-general Ahmet Uzumcu had informed the agency’s executive council that Syria has presented it with new details.
Photo: Reuters
“The additional submission is being reviewed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,” Nesirky said.
He said Uzumcu was expected to give OPCW member countries an update on Tuesday.
He gave no details about the new information.
Western diplomats in New York have said their countries’ intelligence agencies are analyzing the declaration on Syria’s chemical weapons program that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government submitted to the OPCW on Sept. 21.
The contents of Damascus’ declaration have not been made public.
According to declassified French intelligence, Syria’s chemical arsenal includes more than 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents and precursor chemicals for the production of mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin and VX.
Al-Assad’s government, threatened with US airstrikes in retaliation for an Aug. 21 sarin gas attack near Damascus that the US says killed more than 1,400 people, agreed last month to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention and abandon its chemical arsenal.
On Thursday, the UN said the chemical experts have made “encouraging initial progress” and hoped to begin disabling equipment involved in Syria’s chemical weapon process this week.
The rebels and Syrian government blame each other for the Aug. 21 attack on a Damascus suburb.
The US and other Western countries say a report by UN investigators indirectly implicates government-allied forces.
There was some optimism in Washington on the Syria situation. On Thursday, US administration officials held a three-hour briefing for the US Senate Armed Services Committee.
US Senator Carl Levin, the panel’s chairman, said the officials who briefed the committee expressed confidence the chemical weapons plan would work, partly because Russia was pushing al-Assad to cooperate.
“There is confidence that the chemical piece will work, because it’s in everybody’s interest to do it, including Russia’s putting pressure on Assad,” he told reporters.
The UN has been notified of at least 14 chemical attacks since the two-and-a-half-year civil war began. It estimates more than 100,000 people have died since the uprising against al-Assad began in March 2011.
Russia, a staunch ally and arms supplier of al-Assad, also blames the rebels for the Aug. 21 gas attack.
The chemical weapons demolition plan and Security Council Sept. 27 resolution that made it legally binding were based on a deal reached last month in Geneva by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS