War, weather, bureaucracy cause Syria to miss chemical weapons deadline
Syria, 31 December 2013: Security concerns and bureaucracy have caused Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad's government to miss Tuesday's deadline for the removal of deadly
toxins from Syria under an international effort to remove its chemical arsenal, the
global chemical weapons agency said.
Bad weather and a complex multinational
procurement effort for equipment have also delayed the operation, an official from
the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said.
Syria agreed
to abandon its chemical weapons by next June under a deal proposed by Russia and hashed
out with the United States after an August 21 sarin gas attack that Western nations
blamed on Assad's forces.
Damascus agreed to transport the "most critical"
chemicals, including around 20 tonnes of mustard nerve agent, out of the Mediterranean
port of Latakia by December 31 to be safely destroyed abroad away from the war zone.
The
Special Coordinator of the OPCW-UN Joint Mission, Sigrid Kaag, told Reuters in Damascus
on Monday that the OPCW is "comfortable in the knowledge that all the work is about
to be completed" but she did not say how long the delay will last.
Kaag said
on Sunday the deadline will not be met, citing technical delays, and she said on Monday
there had been delays at customs without elaborating further.
The Syrian government
is responsible for the safe packaging, transport along roads to Latakia - including
the main highway from the capital - and removal of chemical weapons.
Government
forces took back control this month of the highway linking Damascus to the coast which
is needed to transport the toxins. Rebel were ousted from three towns along the road
but activists say convoys moving along it will remain vulnerable to rebel ambushes.
Kaag
said the Syrian government has repeatedly voiced a number of security concerns. Damascus
"needs to plan for any eventuality in the journey from different sites to Latakia
and in Latakia itself," she said.
"This is a very complex management exercise
over and above the fact that it is a chemical weapons program that has to be destroyed
at a time that a country is at war," she said.
Despite the delay, Kaag said
"progress is very strong" and there is "a clear determination by all parties to achieve
success."Source: Reuters