Syria ‘co-operating with chemical weapons watchdog’

Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said that experts aimed to visit 20 sites in the coming days and weeks, and could eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons by mid-2014 if they won support from all sides to the conflict.

“The cooperation has been quite constructive and I would say the Syrian authorities have been cooperative,” Uzumcu told a news conference in The Hague.

“If we can ensure cooperation by all parties, and if some temporary ceasefires could be established in order to permit our experts to work in a permissive environment, I think the targets could be reached,” he said.

This is the first time the global organization that polices the Chemical Weapons Convention has sent its inspectors and analytical chemists into a raging civil war and their security is a major concern amid ongoing fighting between President Bashar Assad’s forces and various rebel groups.

The war has already left at least 100,000 people dead.

War rages across Syria

On Wednesday, rebels overran a military post near the southern city of Daraa, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group.

Syria submitted a declaration of its chemical weapons arsenal to the OPCW last month, but the details have not been disclosed.

Chemical weapons experts believe Syria has roughly 1,000 tonnes of sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas, some of it stored as bulk raw chemicals and some of it already loaded onto missiles, warheads or rockets.

Under a Russian-U.S. deal brokered last month, Syria must render useless all production facilities and weapons filling equipment by November. Its entire chemical weapons programme must be destroyed by June 30, 2014.

Despite the difficulties of what the OPCW has characterised as a “very high risk mission”, the OPCW say there has been no shortage of inspectors volunteering to take part.