Weapons agency sends extra team to Syria

Ahmet Uzumcu, director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), spoke to the group’s council at the start of a four-day meeting in The Hague as inspectors continued their mission in Syria to verify and destroy the country’s estimated chemical arsenal in the midst of a two-year civil war.

He called initial Syrian co-operation with the team last week – providing more detail of the country’s chemical weapons and beginning to destroy them and facilities to produce them – “a constructive beginning for what will nonetheless be a long and difficult process”.

His briefing in The Hague came a day after United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon revealed key details of the unprecedented UN-OPCW mission.

In a letter to the Security Council, Mr Ban said that the international community’s aim of destroying Syria’s chemical weapons programme by mid-2014 will require “an operation the likes of which, quite simply, have never been tried before”, with greater operational and security risks because of the speed required.

On Sunday, Syrian personnel working under the supervision of the OPCW experts began destroying the chemical arsenal and production equipment.

On Monday, Syrian state TV broadcast the first images of the international chemical experts at work They were shown touring what appeared to be a chemical plant and a storage facility, inspecting containers and taking samples. The inspectors were also shown taking photographs. The location was not disclosed.

The joint OPCW-UN mission to scrap Syria’s chemical programme stems from a deadly August 21 attack on opposition-held suburbs of Damascus in which the UN has determined the nerve agent sarin was used. Hundreds of people were killed, including many children.

The US and Western allies accuse the Syrian government of being responsible, while Damascus blames the rebels.