Syria pledges to get rid of the Assad’s legacy of chemical weapons

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Al -Shaibani pledged today, Wednesday, to get rid of the remaining chemical weapons in the country after the fall of the government of Bashar al -Assad, and he appealed to the international community to provide assistance in that.

Al -Shaibani made these statements in closed meetings at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, to become the first Syrian foreign minister to speak to the organization on disarmament.

Al -Shaibani told the participating delegations, “Syria is ready … to solve this decades -old problem, which was imposed on us by a former regime,” Al -Shaibani told the participating delegations.

He added, “The legal obligations resulting from violations are a legacy that we inherited and did not do it. However, we are committed to dismantling what may remain from it, and putting an end to this painful legacy and ensuring that Syria becomes a country compatible with international standards.”

Al -Shaibani said that planning has already begun, but the assistance of the international community will be decisive.
He stated that Syria will need technical and logistical assistance, to build capacity and provide resources and experts on the ground.

“Although the Assad regime has been delayed for many years, we understand the need to move quickly, but we also understand the necessity of completing this in a comprehensive way, we cannot succeed alone in achieving this,” he said.

Syria, under the leadership of Assad, joined the organization under an agreement between the United States and Russia, and 1300 tons of chemical weapons and primary vehicles were destroyed, after an attack with sarin gas, killing hundreds of people in 2013.

However, three investigations concluded that the Syrian government forces led by Assad used sarin gas and chlorine barrels in attacks during the civil war, which resulted in the death or injury of thousands.

Investigations were conducted by the joint investigation mechanism between the United Nations and the Organization for the Chemical Weapons Prohibition, the Investigation Team and the identification of the identity of the Organization for Chemical Weapons, and a United Nations war investigation team.

Damascus was supposed to undergo searches under its membership in the Organization for Chemical Weapons, which was banned for more than a decade from discovering the real scope of the chemical weapons program.

The head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Fernando Arias, described earlier today, Wednesday, the political transformation in Syria as “a new and historical opportunity to obtain clarifications on the extent and scope of the entire Syrian Chemical Weapons Program.”

Inspectors of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons concluded that the declared Syrian stocks of chemical weapons have never reflected the situation on the ground.

The inspectors now want to visit about a hundred sites that may have been linked to the chemical weapons program that Assad has adopted for decades.