Syria fails to meet self-imposed deadline to remove chemical arsenal

Syria has failed to meet its own self-imposed deadline to complete the removal of its chemical weapons arsenal, with the UN announcing that Syria still maintains 7.5 per cent of its stockpile.

The final UN deadline for completely destroying the arsenal is 30 June, but after missing several earlier deadlines, the regime itself had set 27 April as the date for completing the removal of 1,300 tonnes of chemical weapons from the country.

Nevertheless, Sigrid Kaag, the head of the joint mission of the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told reporters in Damascus that she hoped Syria would still commit to the June deadline.

Kaag confirmed that over 92 per cent of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile “has been removed or destroyed in the country. This is significant.”

She continued: “A total of 18 removal operations have been carried out.” She stressed that all operations were carried out taking into consideration environmental and public safety.

Kaag urged the government to destroy the remaining chemical weapons material in the “shortest possible time frame”. She added if that were achieved, Syria will have “successfully acquitted itself of a major obligation that is a focus of much international attention.”

According to Reuters news agency, the chemicals are being transported to the Mediterranean port city of Latakia and then loaded onto Norwegian and Danish ships for transport from Syria to the Italian port Gioia Tauro, where they are being transferred to a ship equipped to destroy the chemical agents and turn them into low-toxicity effluent, or liquid outflow.

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad agreed to destroy his chemical weapons after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack last year in the outskirts of Damascus.