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quinta-feira, 2 de janeiro de 2014

Syria's chemical weapons removal delayed


World news and comment from the Guardian | theguardian.com

Syria's chemical weapons removal delayed

Chemicals still at bases days after 500-tonne stockpile was due at port to be loaded on to Scandinavian ships, say sources

The dangerous and difficult task of moving Syria's chemical weapons stockpile from government military bases to the Mediterranean port of Latakia has not yet begun, suggesting a serious delay in the multinational disarmament plan that could threaten a UN-backed timetable.

According to sources involved in the disarmament effort, the roughly 500 tonnes of highly toxic chemicals which Bashar al-Assad's regime had stockpiled for the manufacture of Sarin and VX nerve agents are still in 12 bases around the country, three days after they were due to arrive in Latakia for loading on to Danish and Norwegian ships. Those freighters – the Ark Futura and the Taiko – have returned to the Cypriot port of Limassol since it became clear how far the schedule laid down by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had slipped.

Some of the materials have been packed into US-provided drums, but none of them have been loaded, a diplomat said. It is not clear whether the armoured Russian trucks flown into Syria to transport the chemical weapons have reached all 12 locations.

Meanwhile, US trucks carrying equipment like such as GPS tracking devices to help the movement of the chemicals have been held up at the Jordanian border, apparently by bureaucratic delays.

OPCW and UN officials overseeing the operation point out that the original timetable – which envisaged the first 500-tonne batch of the most dangerous chemical agents arriving in Latakia by the new year – was very ambitious given the ongoing civil war in Syria. They said a combination of fighting, bad weather, delays in securing foreign contributions and bureaucratic snags had led to the delay, but added that the most important deadline was the end of March, by which time the first priority consignment should be destroyed.

Assad's chemical stockpile will be neutralised at sea by a specially equipped US vessel, the Cape Ray, in a hydrolysis process involving the addition of hot water and chemical reagents that should take a maximum of 60 days, and probably less since the UK offered to destroy 150 tonnes of the first consignment.. That would give the Syrian government until roughly the end of January to deliver the material to the coast.

The Assad government, however, has told the OPCW it would take at least 18 days to carry out the overland transport to Latakia, suggesting that the Russian trucks would have to start moving in the next 10 days before the March deadline for the destruction of the material came under serious pressure.

The Cape Ray has yet to leave its port in Norfolk, Virginia, where it has been equipped with two hydrolysis reactors and storage tanks for waste product. The roll-on roll-off freighter will take up to 15 days to reach an as yet unnamed Italian port where the chemical will be transferred from the Scandinavian vessels to it.


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