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OPCW official urges Israel to dismantle its chemical weapons

December 12, 2014 at 12:14 pm

A senior official of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) called on Israel’s allies to pressure it to dismantle its chemical weapons arsenal.

In an interview on an Israeli radio station, the official called on Tel Aviv’s allies to press it to dismantle its arsenal of weapons.

The official, who worked on dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons, said: “You have a very well equipped conventional army; you have good defensive programmes against chemical and biological weapons. You will never use chemical weapons anyway. It would be embarrassing to be the only ones with North Korea to have chemical weapons.”

Israel signed the Geneva Protocol which prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons in international armed conflicts but has not ratified it which means it is not bound by the treaty.

The official said that Egypt possesses thousands of tonnes of chemical weapons as well.

He pointed out that Israel is no longer threatened by a chemical attack after the majority of Syria’s chemical weapons were cleared, although some of it could have remained hidden. “I cannot tell you 100 per cent that they didn’t hide something, you might have a few munitions here and there, but not a programme to produce them,” he explained.

It was highly unlikely that Syria transferred some of its chemical weapons to Hezbollah, he said, as the Syrian regime has no interest in doing so.