Tuesday, Dec 10, 2013
(FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 12/10/13)
By Naftali Bendavid
The agency overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons warned that the international community might miss the deadlines for removing the chemicals from the country.
The most lethal weapons, including mustard gas and components of sarin and VX, were supposed to be removed by Dec. 31, according to a schedule set by The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons under a U.S.-Russia accord to dismantle the arsenal.
"It will be quite difficult to meet this timeline," said Ahmet Uzumcu, OPCW director-general.
The rest of the stockpile of chemical weapons was to be shipped out of Syria by Feb. 5 under the plan.
"This is also quite an ambitious timeline," Mr. Uzumcu said. "There might be a few days' delay." He cited the difficulties of getting the chemicals out of a war zone as the main reason.
Mr. Uzumcu spoke in Oslo, Norway, where he is to accept on Tuesday the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize for the OPCW's work in eliminating chemical weapons world-wide.
The OPCW recently concluded that to destroy the weapons safely, they must be shipped elsewhere because of the civil war engulfing Syria.
But that is creating a series of diplomatic and technical challenges. The most immediate one is collecting the chemicals from storage sites around the country, driving them through battlegrounds, and delivering them to the port of Latakia.
No country has agreed to accept the most lethal weapons for destruction, so the plan now is to neutralize them aboard a ship provided by the U.S. military, the 648-foot Cape Ray.
But an American ship can't pull into a Syrian port, for security and diplomatic reasons. Denmark and Norway have volunteered ships to transport the chemicals to the Cape Ray.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
10-12-13 0417GMT
