A plan to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons has been announced.
The plan will advance in four steps and involve cooperation from at least six different countries: Denmark, Italy, Norway, Russia, Syria and the United States.
Bloomberg Businessweek Story on Syrian Chemical Weapons Destruction Quotes Center Spokesman
“I think the council wants a better picture of Syria’s arsenal and stockpile locations before establishing a time line that it might need to walk back at a future date,” said James Lewis, communications director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a Washington research group.
Eleven Questions about the U.S.-Russia Framework to Rid Syria of Chemical Weapons
On September 14th, 2013, the U.S. and Russian foreign ministers announced an agreement to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. Later that day, Syria submitted its articles of accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The Convention prohibits Member States from producing, stockpiling, stockpiling or using chemical weapons and sets out a 10-year time line for stockpile destruction. The U.S.-Russian framework seeks to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile by early or mid 2014.
The U.S. has begun to talk about the timeline in the framework as goals rather than hard-and-fast deadlines. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons must approve this framework agreement and the UN Security Council needs to pass a resolution requiring that Syria comply with the plan and establish an enforcement mechanism.
The U.S. and Russia have set forth an ambitious timeline to declare, verify, inspect, secure, manage and destroy Syria’s estimated 1,000 metric ton chemical weapons arsenal during an ongoing civil war.
This framework raises several questions, which he address in a detailed analysis over at the Center website here.
Questions on U.S.-Russian Framework to Remove Syria’s Chemical Weapons
Eleven questions and answers designed to examine the effectiveness and potential success of the U.S.-Russian framework to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.
Washington Times Story on Chemical Weapons Quotes Center Spokesman
“I think we bit off a little more than we could chew given the stockpiles we had built,” Mr. Lewis said. “Congressmen have to go home from Washington and they can’t go home and say, ‘Oh, guess what, we just put a chemical weapons disposal facility right there.’ If they do that, they’re not going to get re-elected.”
