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Syria’s foreign minister has vowed to swiftly rid the country of the chemical weapons remaining after the downfall of Bashar al-Assad’s government, and he appealed to the international community for help.
Asaad Hassan al-Shibani spoke during closed-door meetings at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, where he became the first Syrian foreign minister to address the disarmament agency.
Following a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of people in 2013, Assad-led Syria joined the agency under a US-Russian deal and 1,300 metric tonnes of chemical weapons and precursors were destroyed.
But three inquiries – by a joint UN-OPCW mechanism, the OPCW’s Investigation and Identification team, and a UN war crimes investigation – concluded that Syrian government forces under Assad used the nerve agent sarin and chlorine barrel bombs in attacks during the civil war that killed or injured thousands.
As part of its membership, Damascus was supposed to undergo inspections, but for more than a decade the OPCW was prevented from uncovering the true scale of its chemical weapons programme.
“Syria is ready … to solve this decades-old problem imposed on us by a previous regime,” Shibani told delegates.
“The legal obligations resulting from breaches are ones we inherited, not created. Nevertheless, our commitment is to dismantle whatever may be left from it, to put an end to this painful legacy and ensure Syria becomes a nation aligned with international norms.”
Earlier on Wednesday, the OPCW chief, Fernando Arias, called Syria’s political shift “a new and historic opportunity to obtain clarifications on the full extent and scope of the Syrian chemical weapons programme.”
Shibani said planning had begun, but that the help of the international community would be critical. Syria would require technical assistance, logistical assistance, capacity building, resources and expertise on the ground, he said.
“Although the Assad regime stalled for many years, we understand the need to act quickly, but we also understand that this needs to be done thoroughly. For that, we cannot succeed alone,” he said.
Syria’s declared stockpile has never accurately reflected the situation on the ground, OPCW inspectors have concluded. They now want to visit roughly 100 sites that may have been tied to Assad’s decades-old chemical weapons programme.
