SYRIA’S CHEMICAL WEAPONS
— Syria’s chemical weapons are thought to be stored in some 50 different cities, mostly near the Turkish border in northern Syria.
— Syria began to produce its own chemical weapons in 1973 as a deterrence to Israel, and intensified production after the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty was signed in 1979.
— Since 2009, Syria has been amassing a larger chemical weapons arsenal and engineering more complex chemical compounds.
— Syria is believed to have mustard, sarin and nerve agents such as VX, along with aerial bombs, artillery shells, rockets and ballistic missiles that can deliver chemical weapons.
Associated Press
Russia’s proposal to place Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile under international control for dismantling would involve a lengthy and complicated operation made more difficult by a deep lack of trust — not to mention the lack of an inventory.
Syria is believed by experts to have 1,000 tons of chemical warfare agents scattered over several dozen sites across the country. Just getting them transferred while the country’s civil war rages presents a logistical and security nightmare.
Few details are known so far about the plan announced Monday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Syria swiftly accepted, and the initiative was endorsed in quick succession by Britain, France and the U.S. as an idea worth exploring. Russia, Syria’s most powerful ally, says it is now working with Damascus to come up with a detailed plan of action.
But the process must deal with the ongoing fighting and a secretive regime that until now has never formally confirmed that it has chemical weapons.
Lack of trust between the regime’s chief supporters and opponents in the international community is likely to complicate the operation.
“This situation falls outside anything that we’ve known so far,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, an independent chemical weapons consultant and disarmament expert.
President Bashar Assad’s regime is said to have one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and the nerve gas sarin.
There have been longstanding concerns that the embattled leader might unleash them on a larger scale or transfer some of them to the militant Lebanese Hezbollah group, or that the chemical agents could fall into the hands of al-Qaida militants among the rebels.
Many are skeptical that the Syrian regime would follow through on its commitments.
The government has typically accepted last-minute deals with the international community to buy time, then argued over the details or fell back on its promises.
Most recently, Syria called for an immediate U.N. investigation into an alleged chemical attack near Aleppo in March. Negotiations then dragged on until August before a deal was struck.
“The devil is in the details,” said Ralf Trapp, a disarmament consultant who worked for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons from 1997 to 2006. “Neither side (of the Syria conflict) has a reputation for sticking to deals for long periods of time.”
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, known by its acronym OPCW, will likely work, along with the U.N., on a plan for carrying out the deal.
The Chemical Weapons Convention bans the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. The convention requires all parties to the treaty to declare and to destroy whatever chemical weapons they may possess under the international verification of the OPCW.
Syria is not a signatory, meaning the process would have to start from scratch.
The long road toward securing Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal would begin with the Syrian government’s preparing a detailed, comprehensive declaration of what it possesses, including details on production methodology and precursors for chemical agents.
The OPCW and the U.N. would also have to create a legal structure to prepare and then implement the dismantling program, according to experts.
Following that, inspectors, most likely from the OPCW, would go to the country for verification, but only after getting assurances from both the government and the rebels that engineers and technicians can operate safely.
“It would be an enormous effort. The challenges are great, not just technical but also political and emotional. But if people want to do it, it can be done, of course,” Zanders said.
Still, Zanders said the process could take a year, if not more.
Eli Carmon, a counterterrorism expert at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center, a private Israeli university, told Israel Radio on Tuesday that transferring out chemical weapons and destroying them is “impossible in the short term.”
“There is great difficulty to take control of this arsenal, to check how large it is, how and where to transfer it, and how to destroy it,” Carmon said.
Dany Shoham, an expert on chemical and biological weapons at the Israel-based Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said chemical weapons agents could be removed by air or by sea in a carefully coordinated mission. Those carrying out the mission would have to ensure that the weapons are not stolen and that there is no threat of an explosion or leak.
Trapp said he presumed the arsenal was well kept. “This was the crown jewel of the Syrian army,” he said. “I presume that a lot of investment has gone into the stockpile and that it is probably well managed.”
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