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BEIRUT, Lebanon - An advance team from the organization charged with destroying Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles arrived in Damascus on Tuesday to begin talks with Syrian officials on how to carry out its difficult and politically charged task, a ...
Chemical Arms Team to Begin Talks With Syria
By BEN HUBBARD and NICK CUMMING-BRUCE
Published: October 1, 2013
BEIRUT, Lebanon — An advance team from the organization charged with
destroying Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles arrived in Damascus on
Tuesday to begin talks with Syrian officials on how to carry out its
difficult and politically charged task, a United Nations official said.
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The mission by the group, the Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons, which is based in The Hague, was authorized by a
United Nations Security Council resolution
passed unanimously last week. Syria has committed to surrendering its
chemical weapons and joining the international treaty banning them.
The start of the mission comes amid intense international scrutiny of Syria’s chemical weapons following poison gas attacks
on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, on Aug. 21 that killed
hundreds of people. The United States and other powers have accused
government forces of carrying out the attacks, while Syria and its
strongest international ally, Russia, have blamed the rebels.
In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly
in New York on Monday, the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem,
said “terrorists” who had “received chemical agents from regional and
Western countries that are well known to all of us” had used them in
Syria.
Syrian officials often refer to all elements of the opposition, which
includes forces ranging from youth activists to militant groups linked
to Al Qaeda, of being “terrorists.”
For their part, antigovernment activists have criticized the intense
international focus on Syria’s chemical weapons, noting that only a tiny
fraction of the more than 100,000 dead in the civil war were victims of
unconventional weapons.
“Now all the international community is interested in is chemical
weapons, not about the person who used them,” said an activist who goes
by the name Abu al-Hassan in the contested Syrian city of Aleppo, which
has been heavily damaged by artillery barrages and airstrikes. Referring
to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, he added, “They can get rid
of the chemical weapons and Assad can still kill us with tanks and
airplanes.”
A team of United Nations investigators who visited the sites of the Aug.
21 attacks and interviewed and took samples from survivors said they
found that sarin gas had been used, but they did not assign
responsibility for its deployment. The same team concluded a second,
six-day mission to Syria to investigate the sites of other reported
chemical attacks on Monday.
The new mission to dispose of Syria’s chemical arsenal will begin by
verifying its size and components. The United States and Russia have
estimated that Syria has 1,000 tons of chemical agents.
The international chemical weapons watchdog has worked in conflict zones
like Iraq and Libya, but says it has no experience working in the
context of a running civil war like Syria’s, which has divided the
country into a patchwork of rebel- and government-controlled zones, many
of them split by active front lines.
The agency approved an ambitious timetable last week
that calls for destruction of the equipment for producing chemical
weapons by the end of November and of the entire stockpile by mid-2014.
Around 20 experts, including personnel from the five permanent members
of the Security Council, will begin Tuesday to thrash out the details of
how they will reach Syria’s stockpiles.
After the first week, the team is expected to expand and move to verify
what is at those sites and to assist Syria with the destruction of
equipment and facilities for mixing agents and producing chemical
weapons, an official involved with planning the mission said.
American officials have identified about 45 sites involved in Syria’s
chemical weapons program, but Damascus has acknowledged moving some of
its arsenal and experts expect that a smaller number of sites are now
active.
Experts said their visits to those locations would verify the accuracy
of Syria’s disclosure on the weapons it possesses and assess which sites
had the security and infrastructure to support the destruction of
chemical agents and munitions expected to start in November.
But officials of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons said the biggest challenge to their work was the security of its
teams as they work at sites that may be located close to front lines or
are near areas controlled by rebel groups.
While Syria is responsible for the teams’ security, Russia has said
security may be provided by members of a Russian-led coalition that
includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Such arrangements would test just how far the diplomatic rhetoric of
consensus surrounding the destruction of Syria’s arsenal would work in
practice.
Diplomats say any involvement by Russia and its allies in providing
security for the inspectors would give Moscow scope to influence the
pace of implementation of the agreements on chemical weapons.
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