The United States sees the downfall of Bashar al-Assad as a unique opportunity to permanently rid Syria of chemical weapons used by his regime to kill or injure thousands during the country’s civil war.
This was stated by a senior U.S. official.
Washington will strongly support the efforts of the global chemical weapons watchdog to eliminate Syria’s chemical arsenal, said Nicole Shampaine, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), in an interview with Reuters ahead of a closed-door OPCW session on Syria in The Hague.
Syria joined the OPCW in 2013 as part of a U.S.-Russia agreement and committed to destroying its chemical weapons entirely. However, after over a decade of inspections, Syria still possesses prohibited munitions, and investigators have found that they were repeatedly used by Assad’s forces during the 13-year civil war.
“We want to finish the job, and it really is an opportunity for the new leadership of Syria to work with the international community, to work with the OPCW to get this done once and for all,” Shampaine said.
She expects “strong support in the effort to seize this opportunity… and to ensure Syria meets its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).”
The OPCW is a treaty-based organization based in the Netherlands tasked with implementing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Nonproliferation Treaty. It oversaw the destruction of 1,300 metric tons of Syria’s chemical weapons and precursors, much of it aboard a U.S. ship equipped with specialized hydrolysis systems.
