Diplomatic sources said on Monday that the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad provides an opportunity for the country to rid itself of banned weapons, having been found to have used chemical weapons against its own people on several occasions during the civil war.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it was monitoring the situation in Syria by paying “special attention” to chemical weapons-related sites and had urged Syria through its embassy to declare and destroy all prohibited chemicals. Constantly reminded of responsibility. Weapon.
It said an OPCW team has spent more than a decade trying to clarify what types of chemical weapons Syria still possesses, but has made little progress due to obstruction by the Assad government.
“To date, this work continues, and the declaration of Syria’s chemical weapons program cannot yet be considered accurate and complete,” the OPCW statement said.
A diplomatic source said that Assad’s government “has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with us for years” and “we are convinced that they still have a program going on.”
“It costs millions and millions of dollars without making any progress,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “So this is really a wonderful opportunity to get rid of (chemical weapons) forever. This is the moment. Is.”
Security guarantees will need to be arranged prior to any deployment by OPCW inspectors. This would require reaching out to new power brokers in Syria, possibly rebel forces in the coalition that overthrew Assad, such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former affiliate of al Qaeda, which some governments have labeled a terrorist group.
Previous missions have not been free from risk. Members of the UN-OPCW mission in Syria were hit by explosives and AK-47 fire while trying to reach the site of a chemical attack in the northern town of Kafr Zita in May 2014.
Assad’s government and its Russian allies have always denied using chemical weapons against opponents in the civil war that erupted in March 2011.
Three separate investigations – a joint UN-OPCW mechanism, the OPCW Investigation and Identification Team, and a UN war crimes investigation – concluded that Syrian government forces used the nerve agent sarin and chlorine barrel bombs in attacks during the civil war. In which thousands of people were killed or injured. ,
A French court issued an arrest warrant for Assad that was upheld on appeal over the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians.
Proof
Syria declared 1,300 tons of banned chemical weapons after joining the OPCW in 2013. The weapons were destroyed by the international community, but weapons inspectors have since found evidence of an ongoing program that violated the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, under the supervision of the OPCW.
The OPCW has held 28 rounds of consultations with Assad’s government since 2013, but the list of unexplained discrepancies has only grown.
A recent assessment said the 19 outstanding issues included “potentially undeclared full-scale development and production of chemical weapons at two declared chemical weapons-related facilities,” OPCW chief Fernando Arias said in November.
“It was previously announced that these facilities were never operational,” he said. But sources said inspectors found evidence contrary to that claim.
More than 1,000 people were killed in an August 21, 2013 sarin gas attack on Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, among thousands of victims of suspected chemical weapons attacks, and about 100 were killed in an April 4, 2017 gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun in northern Syria. They went. , OPCW has found that the systematic use of chlorine barrel bombs has killed and injured hundreds of people.
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