Syria has begun destroying chemical weapon materials identified in co-operation with the global watchdog, the country's UN envoy has said.
Ibrahim Olabi told the UN Security Council that this marked the first destruction process since the end of the Assad regime in December 2024.
“It’s also the first of its kind to destroy chemical materials on Syrian territory for over a decade," he said.
Mr Olabi said Syria’s co-operation with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was a “profound political transformation in Syria’s approach to safeguarding the multilateral system".
For more than a decade, Syria’s chemical weapons programme was a symbol of the civil war’s brutality. Investigators and human rights groups documented repeated use of banned agents, including sarin and chlorine gas, by the former regime in attacks that killed and injured thousands of civilians.
Mr Olabi said securing chemical weapons sites and identifying munitions would help to prevent dangerous materials from falling into the wrong hands.
“Every site that is secured, every ammunition that is identified, does not merely remove a danger to Syria but the entire world,” he said.
“Syria, and on behalf of the international community, is preparing to hold the first court hearing for the use of such weapons to ensure that there will be no impunity."
Russia's UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya accused the OPCW of politicising its investigation into Syria and questioned findings linking the former regime to chemical weapons violations.
Mr Nebenzya told council members that Moscow, a long-time ally of Al Assad, supported a swift resolution of outstanding issues surrounding Syria's initial declaration under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
He accused the OPCW’s technical secretariat of dragging out the process for more than a decade.
“Today's work of the technical secretariat serves one purpose: to find so-called concealed elements of the military chemical programme in the Syrian Arab Republic, with a focus on accusing the former government of crimes using chemical weapons,” he said.
Mr Nebenzya said Russia had “reasonable doubts” about findings attributed to the former Syrian government in monthly reports by the OPCW, and that “any statements must be backed up by clear, verifiable evidence”.
