Scandinavian ships set sail for Syria to remove chemical weapons
3 January 2014, 16:01
Danish and Norwegian vessels left the Cypriot port of Limassol on Friday and made for Syria to escort a delayed shipment of chemical weapons for destruction, a spokesman said.
'The Norwegian-Danish task group to transport Syria's chemical agents to destruction left the port of Limassol this morning,' said Norwegian armed forces spokesman Lars Magne Hovtun.
'The four ships have now set course toward a holding area in international water outside Syria, so we are most ready to enter the port of Latakia when the order arrives,' he added.
The ships are to be joined by Chinese and Russian vessels inside Syrian waters under a plan agreed in Moscow on Friday.
The removal had been scheduled to take place before December 31, but the deadline passed and a new one has not yet been set.
The year-end deadline for the removal of key weapons components was the first major milestone under a UN Security Council-backed deal arranged by Russia and the United States that aims to eliminate all of Syria's chemical arms by the middle of this year.
Syria's worsening civil war, logistical problems and bad weather held up the operation to move chemical agents to the port of Latakia, said the joint UN-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons mission overseeing the operation.
Under the plan, the chemicals will be taken from Latakia to a port in Italy where they will be transferred to a US Navy vessel fitted with equipment to destroy them at sea.
Naval ships from Russia and China will take part in the operation to transport the most hazardous components of chemical weapons from Syria, Eystein Kvarving said Thursday. Kvarving is a spokesman for the command of the flotilla of two dry cargo ships and two frigates, provided by Denmark and Norway for the operation. Those ships, according to the original plan of the UN-OPCW joint mission were to take up the accomplishment of this task.
Kvarving said the naval ships of Russia and China 'will additionally assure the security during the transportation of containers with chemical agents from the port of Latakia in Syria to one of Italian ports for reloading into an American ship for a subsequent destruction. From the Russian side, the heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great) is participating in the operation, Kvarving said. On Thursday, the Foreign Ministry of the People's Republic of China reported that the Chinese naval ship Yancheng was on its way to Cyprus.
Kvarving emphasized that the Russian and Chinese ships would not be under Danish-Norwegian command but would coordinate their actions with it.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
