The destruction of Syria’s most dangerous chemical weapons materials was completed Aug. 18 aboard a U.S. ship in the Mediterranean Sea.
The destruction of Syria’s most dangerous chemical weapons materials was completed Aug. 18 aboard a U.S. ship in the Mediterranean Sea.
More than a month after a revised deadline, Syria still has about 100 metric tons of chemical weapons material to be sent out of the country for destruction.
Syria failed to meet a revised deadline for shipping all of its chemical weapons materials out of the country.
Syria has picked up the pace in removing its chemical weapons materials for overseas destruction and has sent about half of its stockpile out of the country, according to figures in a March 20 press release from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Amid rising frustration over the pace of Syria’s removal of chemical weapons material for overseas destruction, Syrian authorities are being pressed to speed up the effort.
The decades-long effort to rid the Middle East of nonconventional weapons has made little progress. A ban on chemical weapons is an objective that is both significant enough and realistic enough to start real movement toward the larger goal.