* Toxins still must be delivered to port for removal
* Syria agreed to scrap chemical atrms under Russia-US deal
* Russia, China plan to escort Western ships
By Steve Gutterman
MOSCOW, Dec 28 (Reuters) – Deadly toxins that were to have
been removed from Syria by Dec. 31 under an international effort
to rid the country of its chemical arsenal have not yet been
delivered to port to be put on ships, a Russian diplomat was
quoted as saying on Friday.
The deadline will be missed because toxins that can be used
to make sarin, VX gas and other agents were being packed up and
still faced a potentially hazardous trip to the port of Latakia,
RIA news agency quoted Mikhail Ulyanov as saying.
“The removal has not yet begun,” he said after an
international meeting on the chemical arms removal effort.
Syria has agreed to abandon its chemical weapons by next
June under a deal proposed by Russia and hashed out with the
United States, after an Aug. 21 sarin gas attack that Western
nations blamed on President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Damascus agreed to transport the “most critical” chemicals,
including around 20 tons of mustard nerve agent, out of the
northern port of Latakia by Dec. 31 to be safely destroyed
abroad away from the war zone.
But the head of that global chemicals weapon watchdog, the
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said
earlier this month that the deadline could be missed.
Russia, which has given Assad crucial support during the
nearly three-year-old civil conflict in Syria, airlifted 75
armoured vehicles and trucks to the nation last week to carry
chemicals to Latakia.
Syrian government forces took control of a key highway
connecting Damascus to the coast earlier this month, but Ulyanov
said the trip could still be treacherous.
“They will have to be taken on dangerous roads, there are
several dangerous stretches,” RIA quoted Ulyanov, head of the
Foreign Ministry’s disarmament department, as saying.
He also said experts from several countries, the United
Nations and OPCW had reached a “common understanding of the main
points” of a plan to get the toxins from the port into
international waters, but gave no details.
Ulyanov said on Wednesday that while they are in Syrian
waters, Russian and Chinese warships would escort the Danish and
Norwegian container ships that are to carry the toxins away for
destruction further from the war zone.
(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
