Syria was set to hand over a detailed plan for destroying its chemical arsenal yesterday, the international watchdog says, as a rebel attack near Damascus triggered power outages across the country.
However, prospects for a peace conference, which the UN is trying to convene in parallel with the disarmament process, looked dim after key opposition leaders spurned efforts by Western and Arab powers to persuade them to attend.
On the ground violence raged unabated on Wednesday, with rebels striking a gas pipeline that caused blackouts across Syria.
Photo: Reuters
A correspondent in Damascus said that he could see a huge fire blazing close to the airport, which is near the affected power station.
“A terrorist attack on a gas pipeline that feeds a power station in the south has led to a power outage in the provinces, and work to repair it is in progress,” state news agency SANA quoted Syrian Minister of Electricity Emad Khamis as saying.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that besides the Damascus region, power outages were reported in Aleppo and Homs.
“It is likely this was a large-scale operation planned well in advance,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Last month, a similar outage was caused after a high voltage power line was sabotaged.
Also on Wednesday, a car bomb hit a checkpoint in a western suburb of Damascus, causing multiple casualties among the troops manning it, the Observatory said, and rebels shelled two of Damascus’ main squares killing five people and wounding at least 22.
Meanwhile the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that the Syrian government was expected to hand over its disarmament plan to them by yesterday.
The plan is the next step for Damascus under the terms of a US-Russian deal to head off military strikes on Syria that calls for all its chemical weapons and production facilities to be destroyed by the middle of next year.
“We expect Syria’s initial declaration of its chemical weapons program within the next 24 hours,” spokesman Michael Luhan told reporters on Wednesday in The Hague, where the OPCW is based.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has already handed over an inventory of its chemicals, weapons and facilities, and a joint UN-OPCW team has been in Syria since the start of the month inspecting and destroying them.
The team has now checked 18 of 23 declared sites in Syria, destroying production equipment at almost all of them, Luhan said.
However, parallel efforts by the UN to convene a peace conference in Geneva next month have run into resistance from the opposition, who are insisting on a raft of preconditions.
Leaders of the National Coalition — the main opposition umbrella group — insisted they will not attend unless regime change and al-Assad’s departure are on the table.
A meeting in London on Tuesday between opposition leaders and 11 governments from the Friends of Syria group produced little more than a joint statement that al-Assad should play no future role in government.
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.7 off northern Japan on Monday prompted a short-lived tsunami alert and the advisory of a higher risk of a possible mega-quake for coastal areas there. The Cabinet Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency said there was a 1% chance for a mega-quake, compared to a 0.1% chance during normal times, in the next week or so following the powerful quake near the Chishima and Japan trenches. Officials said the advisory was not a quake prediction but urged residents in 182 towns along the northeastern coasts to raise their preparedness while continuing their daily lives. Prime
HAZARDOUS CONDITION: The typhoon’s sheer size, with winds extending 443km from its center, slowed down the ability of responders to help communities, an official said The US Coast Guard was searching for six people after losing contact with their disabled boat off the coast of Guam following Typhoon Sinlaku. The crew of the 44m dry cargo vessel, the US-registered Mariana, on Wednesday notified the coast guard that the boat had lost its starboard engine and needed assistance, Petty Officer 3rd Class Avery Tibbets said yesterday. The coast guard set up a one-hour communication schedule with the vessel, but lost contact on Thursday. A Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft was launched to search for the six people on board, but it had to return to Guam because of
RSS