Syria’s chlorine stockpile intact

U.S. pushing for international action to contain country’s use of chemical weapons

The Obama administration is mounting a new push to contain Syria’s use of chemical weapons, asserting this week for the first time before an international panel that Damascus is obliged to destroy its legal stocks of chlorine and other industrial toxic chemicals.

But Washington faces stiff opposition from Russia, which has challenged previous UN findings suggesting the Syrian Air Force bombed at least two Syrian towns with chlorine bombs in 2014 and 2015.

The United States this week circulated a draft resolution before the world’s chemical-weapons watchdog, the executive council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), that would require Syria to declare the country’s stockpile of chlorine, a common industrial cleaner that has been converted into a toxic weapon in Syria.

It would also require Damascus to declare those stocks, and any other toxic industrial chemicals, within 30 days. Furthermore, it would require Syria to declare all munitions, including barrel bombs, capable of delivering a chlorine payload within the same time period.

Though the council generally works by consensus, diplomats say that the United States and its European allies, facing Russian opposition to the U.S. draft, are considering taking the unusual step of putting the matter to a vote. It would require support from 28 countries on the OPCW’s executive council, or twothirds of its 41member states, to pass. No final decision has been taken on when, or whether, to call for a final vote.

Diplomats say the U.S. can easily count on the support of the executive council’s nine other Western members, as well as close allies like Japan and several Latin American countries. But they are likely going to have to water down the language to gather sufficient support from Asian and African governments, who may be disinclined to support the most onerous punitive measures.

In 2013, the U.S. and Russia brokered a deal for the destruction of Syria’s stockpile of banned chemical weapons, including sarin, VX and mustard gas.

But international inspectors later discovered evidence of undeclared warfare agents at sites Syria claimed were not part of their chemical warfare program, fueling suspicions the regime may have stashed additional lethal agents and the shells to use them. They have also confirmed that Syria employed chlorine against opposition-held towns in 2014 and 2015.

The U.K., France, Germany and the European Union have backed the U.S. initiative, saying the use of chemical weapons by a member of the convention is unprecedented, and must be answered with a strong response.

“For the first time in the history of the Chemical Weapons Convention,” said one European diplomat, “it has been confirmed that one of the member states has actually used chemical weapons.”

The confidential U.S. draft, which was obtained by Foreign Policy, “condemns in the strongest possible terms” the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government and the Islamic State.

If passed, the text would also grant international inspectors greater access to facilities suspected of concealing chemical-weapon activities, including airbases and barrel bomb storage facilities.

It would also suspend Syria’s voting rights at the OPCW, bar Syrian officials from senior posts at the chemical weapons agency and prohibit Syrian nationals from employment at its headquarters in The Hague.

Syria would effectively be reduced to the status of an observer state.

Syria’s apparent skirting of its commitment to destroy all its chemical weapons — muddled by a maddening lack of documentation and transparency — has alarmed the international agency as well as big Western powers.

The blatant challenge to the 20year-old international convention banning chemical weapons makes a strong response by the international community a must, diplomats said.

“Syria’s dishonesty,” said Geoffrey Adams, Britain’s ambassador at The Hague, has led “us to believe that Syria has not only sought to preserve some of its chemical weapons capabilities, but also to develop new delivery systems in order to use chlorine as a chemical weapon.”

If passed, the draft would suspend Syria’s voting rights at the OPCW. Syria would effectively be reduced to the status of an observer state