WASHINGTON // The US defence secretary on Thursday voiced concern over Syria’s delay in handing over its chemical weapons arsenal and pressed Damascus to solve the problem.
Chuck Hagel’s comments came after the US sent a statement to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the world’s chemicals weapons watchdog in The Hague, saying just 4 per cent of the chemicals declared by Syria had been removed.
“I do not know what the Syrian government’s motives are — if this is incompetence — or why they are behind in delivering these materials,” Mr Hagel told reporters in Warsaw, adding that “they need to fix this”.
The US representative to the OPCW, Robert Mikulak, echoed Mr Hagel’s concerns in his statement to the OPCW’s executive council.
“Syria has said that its delay in transporting these chemicals has been caused by ‘security concerns’ and insisted on additional equipment — armoured jackets for shipping containers, electronic countermeasures, and detectors for improvised explosive devices,” US representative to the OPCW Robert Mikulak said in the statement to the OPCW’s executive council.
“These demands are without merit, and display a ‘bargaining mentality’ rather than a security mentality,” he added.
Just two shipments of around 16 metric tonnes each of so-called Category 1 chemicals have left Syria’s port of Latakia this month as part of an internationally backed disarmament plan supervised by the OPCW.
“The United States is concerned that the Syrian government is behind in delivering the chemical weapons on time,” Mr Hagel said.
“The Syrian government has to take responsibility to respect the commitment that had been made.”
Mr Hagel said he raised the issue with Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday, asking him “to do what he could to influence the Syrian government”.
The UN Security Council backed a US-Russian deal last year to eliminate Syria’s vast chemical arsenal.
The agreement was brokered as a way to avert US missile strikes that Washington threatened after a chemical attack near Damascus that the US and other western governments blamed on the regime.
Under the agreement, Syria’s entire chemical arsenal is supposed to be eliminated by June 30.
Syria has declared about 700 tonnes of its most-dangerous chemicals and 500 tonnes of less dangerous precursor chemicals, which only become toxic when mixed with other compounds.
Almost all the chemicals and precursors, except for isopropanol which is to be destroyed within the war-torn country, are supposed to be removed by February 5.
Syrian negotiators in Geneva meanwhile observed a minute of silence Thursday to honour the tens of thousands of people who have died in their country’s civil war — a rare moment of unity in talks.
UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said the opposition delegation made the suggestion.
Mr Brahimi also said he was “very disappointed” that the humanitarian aid effort to get food convoys into besieged parts of the central Syrian city of Homs had stalled. Negotiations are still under way about whether to allow people to evacuate the area beforehand.
But a food convoy gained entry to Syria’s besieged Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, where dozens have died from shortages of food and medicines, the UN and Syrian state media said.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse
