NEW YORK CITY: Syria\u2019s ambassador to the UN announced on Thursday the start of what he described as a historic process: the destruction of chemical weapons materials uncovered since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024.<\/p>\n
Ibrahim Olabi told the Security Council it marked the first time in more than a decade that such materials had been destroyed on Syrian soil.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the very first destruction process since we have been liberated from the previous regime,\u201d he said, and proof that a situation which \u201cfor years constituted the source of danger to Syrians and to the world\u201d could instead become \u201ca model of what diplomacy, coupled with determination and genuine political will and international cooperation, can achieve on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olabi told council members this cooperation represented more than simply technical progress; it reflected \u201ca profound political transformation in Syria\u2019s approach to safeguarding the multilateral system,\u201d at a moment when a state \u201cat the heart of a conflict-ridden Middle East\u201d was choosing, on its own, to return to the international fold \u201cthrough the gateway of responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Syria, he said, was \u201csafeguarding this international system through actions, deeds not words.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, he warned that repeated Israeli attacks on Syria have impeded the destruction process \u201cat certain stages,\u201d at times bringing it to \u201ca complete halt\u201d and forcing the cancellation of planned inspection visits, while exposing Syrian and international teams working at the sites to danger.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot safeguard the security of the region if our security is exposed to attacks at the hands of Israel,\u201d which was \u201cflouting\u201d regional security and breaching international conventions the council itself had endorsed, he said.<\/p>\n
The new authorities in Syria inherited the responsibility for dealing with the chemical weapons from the former regime, he said, \u201ceven though it is not our legacy.\u201d He called on the international community to at the very least refrain from undermining the ability of Damascus to carry out the work \u201con its behalf,\u201d and appealed to the council to take action to prevent Israeli strikes from derailing the disarmament effort.<\/p>\n
The sarin attack in Ghouta on Aug. 21, 2013, was the deadliest chemical weapons assault of the Syrian civil war. Rockets carrying the chemical agent fired into the eastern and western suburbs of Damascus killed at least 1,144 people, according to a 2026 tally by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Other research puts the toll as high as 1,466, and thousands were injured. A UN investigation later that year confirmed the use of sarin against civilians \u201con a relatively large scale.\u201d The attack drew international condemnation, and an agreement between the US and Russia to dismantle Syria\u2019s declared chemical arsenal.<\/p>\n
Rights groups say the Ghouta strikes were not an isolated incident, and well over 200 chemical attacks under the Assad government were documented during nearly 14 years of war.<\/p>\n
Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN\u2019s high representative for disarmament affairs, gave the council a detailed technical update on the process in Syria, crediting sustained cooperation between the new authorities in Damascus and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for the progress that has been made.<\/p>\n
She said an OPCW team verified in August the irreversible destruction of 42 aerial bombs, which marked \u201cthe first time since 2014\u201d that the watchdog had verified the destruction of chemical munitions in Syria.<\/p>\n
The milestone followed an OPCW deployment in May that uncovered previously undeclared Assad-era chemical weapons, prompting Damascus in June to amend its original declaration to include an additional production facility, a chemical used in nerve-agent manufacturing, empty munitions, and two storage sites in Al-Qutayfah and Homs.<\/p>\n
The OPCW\u2019s Executive Council approved facility agreements for those two sites in July, along with a verification plan for destroying Category 3 weapons at Al-Qutayfah, clearing the way for the destruction activity that has now begun.<\/p>\n
Nakamitsu said the Syrian government had \u201cmobilized substantial resources to facilitate and support OPCW deployments\u201d during visits, interviews and sample collection by the organization\u2019s technical secretariat.<\/p>\n
Citing comments by the OPCW\u2019s director-general, she said the newly verified destruction was \u201ca result of the close collaboration between the Syrian government and the OPCW Technical Secretariat.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Executive Council, she noted, also voted in July to reinstate Syria\u2019s rights and privileges under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and encouraged Damascus to continue to progress \u201cas expeditiously as possible\u201d toward the identification, declaration and destruction of any remaining chemical weapons.<\/p>\n
Nakamitsu invoked the 13th anniversary commemoration of the Ghouta victims last month as \u201ca stark reminder\u201d that the use of chemical weapons was intolerable, under any circumstances, and impunity for those who use them was equally unacceptable.<\/p>\n
She urged council members \u201cto unite and show leadership in providing the support that this unprecedented effort requires,\u201d and reaffirmed the UN\u2019s backing for the independence and impartiality of the OPCW.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK CITY: Syria\u2019s ambassador to the UN announced on Thursday the start of what he described as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[1613,8222,20819,95,75574],"class_list":["post-277269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-chemical-weapons","tag-destruction","tag-syria","tag-un-envoy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117209310317201819","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277269","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=277269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}