100 experts to carry out Syria disarmament

Washington: One hundred specialists drawn from the United Nations and the organisation that polices the global ban on chemical weapons will be sent to Syria over the next eight months to help dismantle and destroy its 1,000-ton arsenal, an extremely hazardous task that has never been tried and that could fail without Syria’s cooperation, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

In a 10-page report submitted to the Security Council that provided new detail on the undertaking, Ban said he would establish a joint mission with the policing group, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

It will be based in Damascus, the Syrian capital, but will include a staging ground on the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, about 500km west.

He said the staging ground would help increase security for the workers and the specialised equipment needed to help monitor and neutralize Syria’s vast quantities of deadly chemical compounds. It is “highly probable,” Ban said, that he will ask other member states, which he did not identify, to help the joint mission complete its work.

His report provided the first official indication of the size of the staff for the mission. The roughly 35-member advance team currently in Syria would grow to “approximately 100 personnel”.

The report was required as part of the Security Council’s unanimous resolution on September 27 aimed at ensuring the Syrian government’s compliance with its surprise pledge to shed chemical arms, which have been banned since 1925 and which the government of President Bashar Al Assad had steadfastly refused to even acknowledge possessing until last month.

The Al Assad government’s pledge to purge the weapons was the result of a rush of diplomatic pressure by the US and Russia, Syria’s most important ally, after more than 1,400 Syrians died on August 21 in a poison-gas attack, the single biggest mass killing of the Syrian civil war.

Each side has blamed the other for that assault, but the report of a UN-sponsored inquest released on September 16 contained strong evidence that Syrian military forces had been responsible.

Under Syria’s pledge, all chemical munitions in the country will be sequestered and destroyed by the middle of 2014.

Ban said in his report that the Syrian government would be responsible for the demolition of the weapons, which would be overseen by the joint mission of the United Nations and the chemical weapons policing group, based in The Hague, Netherlands.

The demolition, he said, will be conducted in three stages - planning, destruction and, most difficult, verification. The weapons will have to be moved in some cases, he said, but he gave no indication that they would be transported outside the country.