Joint OPCW-UN team to inspect Syria chemical sites next week

Advance team of experts receive additional information from Damascus, report ‘early progress’

By ToI Staff and AP 5 October 2013, 10:18 am

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A convoy of inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons prepares to cross into Syria at the Lebanese border crossing point of Masnaa, eastern Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, on Tuesday, October 1, 2013. (photo credit: AP/Bilal Hussein)

A joint team made up of members from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the UN will travel to Syria next week to inspect chemical weapons sites, a UN spokesperson said Friday.

The team received information “additional to the disclosure on its chemical weapons program which Syria submitted on 21 September,” UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky.

“Documents handed over [on Wednesday] by the Syrian Government look promising, according to team members but further analysis, particularly of technical diagrams, will be necessary and some more questions remain to be answered, Nesirky said.

Earlier this week, an advance team of disarmament experts reported “early progress” after arriving in Syria on Tuesday to begin laying the foundations for a broader operation charged with dismantling and ultimately destroying President Bashar Assad’s chemical program over the next nine months.

The first step in the undertaking — endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution last week — is to scrap Syria’s capacity to manufacture chemical weapons by November 1.