US sees Assad’s fall as chance to destroy Syria’s chemical arsenal ‘once and for all’

AMSTERDAM: The United States sees the fall of Bashar al-Assad as an extraordinary chance to rid Syria “once and for all” of chemical weapons that killed or injured thousands of people in its civil war, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.

Washington will strongly back efforts by the global chemical weapons watchdog to eliminate Syria’s chemical arsenal, Nicole Shampaine, U.S. ambassador to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told Reuters in an interview ahead of a closed-door OPCW session on Syria in The Hague.

At the meeting due to begin at 1430 GMT, the OPCW’s chief was expected to seek approval from key member states for funding and technical assistance to implement a time-consuming chemical nonproliferation process in Syria.

Syria joined the OPCW in 2013 under a U.S.-Russian deal and agreed to eliminate its chemical arsenal. But after more than a decade of inspections, Syria still possesses banned munitions and investigators found such weapons were used repeatedly by President Assad’s forces during the 13-year civil war.

“We want to finish the job and it’s really an opportunity for Syria’s new leadership to work with the international community, work with the OPCW to get the job done once and for all,” Shampaine said.

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She expects “there will be a lot of support in trying to seize this opportunity … and get Syria to comply with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention” (CWC).

The OPCW is a treaty-based organisation in the Netherlands tasked with implementing the 1997 chemical nonproliferation treaty. It oversaw the destruction of 1,300 metric tons of Syrian chemical weapons and precursors, a large portion on a U.S. ship equipped with specialised hydrolysis systems.

Assad-ruled Syria and its military ally Russia always denied using chemical weapons in the devastating civil war.

Three investigations - a joint U.N.-OPCW mechanism, the OPCW’s Investigation and Identification team, and a U.N. war crimes investigation - concluded that Syrian government forces did use the nerve agent sarin and chlorine barrel bombs in the drawn-out conflict with opposition forces.

Dangerous disorder

With Syria still in disorder with myriad armed groups around the shattered country, the OPCW will be concerned to act quickly to prevent any chemical weapons falling into the wrong hands.

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Immediate priorities, diplomatic sources said, include locating and securing chemical weapons sites, taking inventory of remaining chemicals and munitions and determining how and where to destroy them safely.

The demise of the Assad family’s 54-year-long rule also provides an opportunity to access areas where chemical weapons were used and to collect evidence, they said.

Diplomats at the OPCW believe Assad’s exit creates an opportunity to gain access to the production and storage facilities of the program, which has included sarin nerve agent, chlorine bombs and other poisonous munitions.

The OPCW conducted 28 rounds of consultations with Assad’s government. Among the unresolved issues are “potentially undeclared, full-scale development and production of chemical weapons at two declared chemical weapons-related facilities”, OPCW chief Fernando Arias said in November.

The issue will be tackled at Thursday’s session of the OPCW’s 41-member executive council, convened after the sudden collapse last weekend of Assad’s government in the face of a lightning rebel offensive after years of battlefield stalemate.

“The Syrian regime, the Assad regime, used chemical weapons, used sarin, used chlorine barrel bombs repeatedly, and never declared those to the OPCW, never verifiably destroyed those. That is inherently a proliferation concern,” Shampaine said.