Friday 27 September 2013

Agreement Reached On Syria UN Chemical Weapons Resolution



Diplomats at the UN say the five permanent
members of the divided Security Council
appear to have reached agreement on a
resolution to require Syria to dismantle its
chemical-weapons stockpiles. Their comments on Thursday came a day
after Sergey Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy
foreign minister, said negotiators had
overcome a major hurdle and agreed that
the text of the resolution would include a
reference to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which allows for military and nonmilitary
actions to promote peace and security. The five veto-wielding members of the
Security Council have been discussing for
weeks what to include in a new resolution
requiring that Syria’s chemical weapons
stockpile be secured and dismantled. The US and Russia had been at odds on how
to enforce the resolution. Ryabkov said earlier that his country was
ready to help guard Syrian chemical
weapons sites and destroy President Bashar
al-Assad’s stockpiles, but it would not ship
any of the chemical arms to Russia for
destruction. “We will be ready to help in guarding those
facilities where work is being carried out,”
the Interfax news agency quoted Ryabkov
as saying at an arms fair in the Ural
Mountains city of Nizhny Tagil. Russia and the US are the only countries
with industrial-scale capacity to handle
mustard, VX, sarin or cyanide-armed
munitions, but the import of chemical
weapons is banned under US law. Ryabkov said Russia would not import
chemical weapons either, state-run RIA
reported. Noting that the Chemical Weapons
Convention prohibits the export of chemical
weapons, he said: “We believe the
destruction [of chemical weapons] on
Syrian territory is the best option.” John Kerry, US secretary of state, and
Sergey Lavrov, Russian foreign minister,
approved the deal this month, under which
inspections of chemical weapons sites in
Syria are to be completed by November 30
and its entire arsenal destroyed by June 30, 2014. The 30-month conflict in Syria has left
more than 100,000 people dead.

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