Syria vows to destroy any remaining Assad-era chemical weapons

The Syrian Foreign Minister told the International Chemical Weapons Control Authority that the new government is committed to the destruction of any remaining stocks that are produced during the era of President Bashar al -Assad.

In addressing the organization’s meeting to ban chemical weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, Al -Shaibani’s pledge to “put an end to this painful legacy, to achieve justice to the victims, and to ensure that compliance with international law is strong.”

But he added that Syria “will need to support the international community.”

The Assad government denied the use of chemical weapons during the 14 -year civil war, but activists accused them of carrying out dozens of chemical attacks.

In 2013, missiles with Sarin’s neuroscientist were fired in several suburbs of rebel -controlled in Ghouta East and West, killing hundreds of people. United Nations experts confirmed the use of a Sarin nerve agent, but they were not asked to attribute any blame.

Al-Assad denied that his forces fired the missiles, but agreed to sign the Chemical Weapons Agreement (CWC) and allow the joint OPCW -un mission to destroy the declared chemical arsenic in Syria. However, questions about the accuracy and completion of the declaration of Syria remained.

The OPCW investigation and definition team documented multiple uses of chemical weapons during the war, with the Syrian army identifying as a perpetrator of five cases of chemical weapons in 2017 and 2018.

Including the April 2018 attack on Douma, in Eastern Ghouta, when a Syrian Air Force helicopter was believed to have dropped cylinders filled with highly concentrated chlorine gases on two residential buildings, killing at least 43 people.

It also found an OPCW fact -finding task, which was not assigned to identify the perpetrators, that chemical weapons were used or likely to be used in 20 other cases.

Last month, the OPCW Director, Fernando Arias, visited Damascus to hold talks with Shaibani and the interim Syrian president, Ahmed Al -Sharra, who led the rebel attack that overthrew a lion in December.

At a meeting on Wednesday, Aryas announced that the “advanced political scene in Syria” provided the international community “a new and historical opportunity to complete the chemical weapons program in Syria.

He said that a team of OPCW technical experts will be published in Damascus in the coming days and start planning visits to suspected chemical weapons sites.

Shaibani also met with the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, in The Hague on Wednesday.

The International Criminal Court said that their talks “followed the visit of the public prosecutor in January to Damascus, and exploring partnerships towards accountability for the crimes committed in Syria.”

Syria is not a member of the International Criminal Court, but Khan said that the new government can accept the jurisdiction of the court as a first step, as Ukraine has done regarding the war with Russia.