adminDAMASCUS. — Experts tasked with implementing a UN resolution ordering the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal began work yesterday, as the world body demanded access to civilians trapped by the conflict.
Resolution 2118 was passed after gas attacks on the outskirts of Damascus killed hundreds of people on August 21, an atrocity that prompted the United States to threaten military strikes on the Syrian government and later led to a rare US-Russian disarmament accord.
“Joint work with the Syrian authorities has begun on securing the sites where the team will operate,” the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations said in a statement.
“In addition, planning continues for one of the team’s immediate tasks, disabling Syria’s chemical weapons production facilities, which should begin soon,” said the statement, which detailed the activities of the team’s first day of work on Wednesday. Nine disarmament experts, part of a 19-member team from The Hague-based OPCW, were earlier seen leaving their Damascus hotel in three cars, heading for an unknown destination.
The OPCW team faces a daunting task, as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is understood to have more than 1,000 tonnes of the nerve agent sarin, mustard gas and other banned chemical weapons.
Their immediate aim is to disable chemical weapons production sites by late October or early November using “expedient methods,” including using explosives, sledgehammers or pouring concrete, an OPCW official said. It is the first time in OPCW history that such a mission to is being undertaken in a country embroiled in a civil war.
The Syria conflict has killed more than 115,000 people, forced millions more to flee as refugees and trapped hundreds of thousands in besieged towns and neighbourhoods. The UN Security Council on Wednesday demanded immediate and “unhindered” access to the trapped civilians, in a non-binding statement that diplomats said sends a strong signal to Damascus. UN aid agencies say there are over 2.1 million refugees, and almost six million people displaced inside Syria. — AFP.
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