Syria on Wednesday unveiled a US-backed plan to eliminate the remnants of the Assad-era chemical weapons programme - an ambitious effort aimed at closing one of the most harrowing chapters of the country’s civil war.
The initiative, announced on the sidelines of the UN in New York, brought together western governments, including the US, Britain, France, Germany and Canada.
The plan will establish a joint task force to find, secure and dismantle what is left of Syria’s chemical weapons, much of which is believed to have been concealed under the government of former president Bashar Al Assad.
For more than a decade, Syria’s chemical weapons programme has stood as a symbol of the war’s brutality.
Investigators and human rights groups have documented repeated use of banned agents, including sarin and chlorine gas, in attacks that killed and injured thousands of civilians.
Although Syria formally joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013 and declared a stockpile of about 1,300 tonnes, international monitors have long maintained that the declaration was incomplete and that prohibited activities continued.
Officials with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said more than 100 previously undeclared sites will need to be inspected.
“This will take time, and the challenges ahead are immense,” Mohamad Katoub, Syria’s ambassador to the chemical weapons watchdog OPCW, said at the launch.
Mr Katoub said that much of the programme had been deliberately hidden and remains poorly understood.
Investigators, he said, are likely to face restricted access to key locations, and dangers including landmines and unexploded ordnance.
Syria’s representative to the UN, Ibrahim Olabi, described the “historic initiative” as a step towards accountability after years of violations.
“Syria's name was tarnished by the former regime for many years because of the use of chemical weapons against its own people. Now, Syria is leading, instead of Syria being a suspect state, a criminal state, led by the former regime. Now Syria is leading, with major countries behind it,” he told reporters.
Many of those in the leadership in Syria, he added, are victims of those crimes, and “now we're tackling them head on, because it's our responsibility”.
“It does trigger our trauma,” said Mr Olabi. “But that also puts a responsibility on us for these things never to happen again.”
