Syria’s foreign minister told global chemical weapons regulators that the new government is committed to destroying the remaining inventory produced under the ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
At the organizing meeting of the Theatre Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Asaad al-Shibani vowed to “end this painful legacy, bring justice to victims and ensure compliance with international law is reliable”.
But he added that Syria will “need the support of the international community”.
Assad’s administration denied the use of chemical weapons during the 14-year period of the Civil War, but activists accused it of dozens of chemical attacks.
In 2013, rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were fired from several rebel-controlled suburbs in the East and West, killing hundreds of people. UN experts confirmed the use of the nerve agent sarin, but did not ask them to blame any responsibility.
Assad denied that his troops fired rockets, but he did agree to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and allow a joint OPCW-UN mission to destroy the chemical arsenal in Syria. However, questions about the accuracy and completeness of the Syrian statement remain.
The OPCW’s Investigation and Identification Team documented the multiple uses of chemical weapons during the war and determined that the Syrian army was the perpetrator of the use of five boxes of chemical weapons in 2017 and 2018.
These included an April 2018 attack on Douma in eastern Ghouta, where Syrian Air Force helicopters were believed to have dropped two cylinders filled with highly concentrated chlorine gas on two apartment buildings, killing at least 43 people.
The earlier OPCW fact-finding mission, not required to identify the perpetrators, also found that chemical weapons were used or possible in 20 other instances.
Last month, OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias visited Damascus to hold talks with Shibani and interim Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who led the rebel offensive and overthrew Assad in December.
At the meeting on Wednesday, Arias announced that the “developing political landscape of Syria” provides the international community with “a new historic opportunity to complete the chemical weapons program to eliminate Syria.”
He said a team of technical experts from OPCW will be deployed to Damascus in the coming days and begin planning to visit suspicious chemical weapons sites.
Shibani also met with Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Wednesday.
The International Criminal Court said their talks “followed up with the prosecutor’s visit to Damascus in January and explored a partnership for the responsibility for crimes committed in Syria”.
Syria is not a member of the International Criminal Court, but Khan said the new government could accept the court’s jurisdiction as a first step because Ukraine did what it was in the war with Russia.
