Syrian chemical weapons to be completely removed by April 13
14 March 2014, 13:00 -- Syria's chemical weapons that should be destroyed outside the country could be removed by April 13, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said on Friday, adding there was no need to adjust the timeframe.
Syria's chemical weapons that should be destroyed outside the country could be removed by April 13, a Russian Foreign Ministry official has said, adding there was no need to adjust the timeframe.
'If there are no difficulties then in a month, on April 13, the removal will be practically finished,' Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the Foreign Ministry's security and disarmament department, was quoted as saying by RIA news agency on Friday.
Ulyanov added that Syria would present the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons with a new plan to destroy its chemical weapons production facilities at the end of March, accoridng to the Reuters news agency.
Syria declared 12 production facilities to the OPCW and had until March 15 to destroy them under the deal. Damascus has already missed several deadlines laid out in the agreement.
The US-Russia deal was aimed at heading off US military strikes against President Bashar al-Assad's government after hundreds of people were killed last August in a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus.
Damascus agreed last year to destroy all chemical weapons facilities and surrender 1,300 metric tonnes of toxic agents to a joint OPCW/United Nations mission. It has until June 30 to eliminate its chemical weapons programme completely.
The process of removing chemical weapons began in January, with t he OPCW turning to the US military for assistance after no country volunteered to destroy the chemical weapons on its soil, despite an international consensus that the weapons be neutralised outside Syria.
Voice of Russia, Reuters, Al Jazeera, RIA
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