Syria completes delivery of all declared chemical weapons

Syria has finished delivering the last chemical weapons declared to the international community to be destroyed, as announced on Monday the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), to coordinate the destruction of the arsenal.

“At this moment I’m talking about, the vessel carrying chemical weapons just left the port of Latakia “, said the executive director of the OPCW, Ahmet Uzumcu, during a press conference in The Hague. Uzumcu added that the destruction of around 1,300 tons of declared chemical will take about four months, so it will be difficult to comply with the deadline of June 30 for disabling poisonous substances.

The delivery of the Syrian arsenal occurs under chemical disarmament agreement signed in September between Russia, Syria and the U.S. to avoid U.S. missile strike. On 21 August a sarin gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus sparked international outrage. The White House announced on August 30 that it had reached the conclusion that it was the regime of Bashar al-Assad who had used sarin against civilians. It was President Obama who in August 2012 stated that if the Damascus regime resorted to such weapons it would be like crossing the red line ” that would serve as a trigger for a foreign military intervention in Syria. However, a last-minute deal established the framework for the OPCW manage the destruction of the arsenal. November 1, Syria met the first deadline for destroying their production systems, mixing and loading arms.

The U.S. ship, MV Cap Ray is responsible for its destruction in the Mediterranean by the caustic solution, a process that consists in neutralizing the lethal effects of the gas. In the operation involved at least eight coordinated by United Nations. Two companies – Ekokem AB OY (Finland) and Veolia Environmental Services Technical Solutions (USA) – is that, through the allocation of a public competition in which 14 global companies were presented, managed the nearly 7,000 tons of waste resulting from the destruction of the arsenal.

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Posted by Maleeha Tareen on Jun 24 2014. Filed under Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.