By Anthony Deutsch<\/p>\n
AMSTERDAM, May 26 (Reuters) – Syria’s transitional leadership has located remnants of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s clandestine chemical weapons program, including raw materials and munitions similar to those used to carry out \u200cdeadly gas attacks during the country’s long-running civil war, a Syrian official told Reuters on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Syrian authorities have \u200calso taken into custody 18 suspects for alleged involvement in Assad’s chemical weapons program, including high-level military, political and technical officials, Mohamad Katoub, Syria’s permanent \u200brepresentative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, said in an interview.<\/p>\n
The names of the suspects were not made public because the investigation was ongoing, he said, adding that several had served as major generals under the Assad regime. At least four were on European, UK or U.S. sanctions lists, he said.<\/p>\n
Syria, emerging from its 14-year civil war as an \u200cally of the West, has vowed to \u2060work with the international community to rid itself of legacy weapons of mass destruction that pose a proliferation risk.<\/p>\n
CHEMICAL MUNITIONS FOUND<\/p>\n
The OPCW said in a report on Tuesday that its team in \u2060Syria had visited several high-priority undeclared locations in the northern coastal and central areas with Syrian authorities. The mission was ongoing, it said, but “dozens of undeclared chemical munitions such as aerial bombs and rockets, as well as separately found chemicals and related equipment” had \u200bbeen discovered.<\/p>\n
Syrian \u200bteams, working for months with OPCW inspectors, located more than 70 \u200brockets and aerial bombs, as well as raw \u200cingredients for the production of sarin, a nerve agent used by Assad’s forces in attacks that killed more than 1,300 people in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in August 2013 and Al-Lataminah in March 2017, Katoub said.<\/p>\n
Chemical weapon mixing and storage equipment and hexamine, a stabilization agent known to have been used by Assad’s forces in sarin production, were also found during searches at three locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the secrecy, the danger, and the immense security challenges … today we delivered for the Syrian people \u200cand for the world,” Katoub said. “It is the first time such munitions \u200bcould be recovered before they were used in crimes against the Syrian \u200bpeople.”<\/p>\n
He said securing and storing the found materials contributes \u200bto national and global security.<\/p>\n
Joint investigations by the United Nations and the global chemical weapons watchdog \u200cin The Hague had previously found that sarin, \u200bas well as chlorine and sulfur \u200bmustard gas, were used repeatedly by the Assad regime. The OPCW, which oversees the international ban on toxic munitions, has said as many as 100 sites across Syria need to be inspected.<\/p>\n
Syria signed the Chemical Weapons Convention \u200bin 2013 and declared a 1,300-ton stockpile, \u200cbut prohibited use continued. The size of the remaining program and stockpile has remained unclear.<\/p>\n
In March, Syria launched \u200ba plan supported by Washington to rid the Middle Eastern country of its legacy chemical weapons.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bAnthony Deutsch, editing by Charlotte Van Campenhout and Rod Nickel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Anthony Deutsch AMSTERDAM, May 26 (Reuters) – Syria’s transitional leadership has located remnants of former Syrian President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[1613,8222,44237,12627,95,6410,11078,44236,13942],"class_list":["post-132340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-chemical-weapons","tag-mohamad-katoub","tag-opcw","tag-syria","tag-syrian-authorities","tag-syrian-people","tag-transitional-leadership","tag-weapons-of-mass-destruction"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116642847262252043","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}