Syria hands chemical arms inventory over to watchdog
DAMASCUS: Syria handed over the remaining details of its chemical arsenal yesterday, meeting a deadline under a deal that headed off military strikes, the world’s chemical weapons watchdog said.
Damascus had already given details of part of its inventory to the Haguebased Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), but the group said the process was now complete.
The ‘‘ OPCW has confirmed it has received the expected disclosure from the Syrian government regarding its chemical weapons programme’’, the watchdog said. ‘‘The Technical Secretariat is reviewing the information received.’’
The disclosure comes as UN envoys struggle to agree on the wording of a resolution to enshrine the deal under which Syria is handing over its chemical weapons for destruction.
The US-Russian agreement, worked out as Washington threatened military action in response to an Aug 21 chemical weapons attack outside Damascus, requires Syria to hand over all of its arsenal.
It has received widespread international support, including from China, whose Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing would ‘‘support the early launch of the process to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons’’. Mr Wang also called for the convening of a mooted peace conference in Geneva ‘‘as soon as possible’’.
But the international consensus on the plan has not carried over into negotiations on the wording of a UN Security Council resolution to back it up.
The council’s five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — have been wrangling over the text of the resolution since Monday in a bid to find common ground. The US, France and Britain want a strongly worded resolution, possibly under the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, which could allow the use of force or sanctions to ensure compliance.
However Russia, a key ally of Damascus, opposes all references to use of force.
The chemical weapons disarmament deal has done little to slow fighting on the ground, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reporting regime troops killed 15 people in a Sunni village in the central province of Hama late on Friday.
The Syrian opposition National Coalition meanwhile rejected an offer from Iranian President Hassan Rohani for Teheran to mediate talks between rebels and the regime.