Syria chemical weapons: UN chief warns of fraught operation

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/08/syria-chemical-weapons-un-operation

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Dismantling Syria's chemical weapons will require a team of around 100 international experts and the help of United Nations member states to maintain security during a dangerous operation taking more than six months and requiring entry into areas of violent conflict, the UN secretary general has warned.

Ban Ki-moon laid out the challenges in a letter to the UN security council as an advance team from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the UN oversaw Syrian forces using blowtorches and angle grinders to render missile warheads and bombs unusable. The demolition work is due to last until mid-2014.

Ban told the 15-nation council that the first phase of dismantling was under way. The second would involve the destruction of chemical weapons and mixing equipment; and the third would verify and monitor the total elimination of Syria's chemical weapons programme.

"Phase III will be the most difficult and challenging phase," the letter states. "From 1 November 2013 to 30 June 2014 ... the joint mission will be expected to support, monitor and verify the destruction of a complex chemical weapons programme involving multiple sites spread over a country engulfed in violent conflict, which includes approximately 1,000 metric tonnes of chemical weapons, agents and precursors."

Those substances were "dangerous to handle, dangerous to transport and dangerous to destroy", Ban said. "The joint mission will build upon the advance team deployment and expand to a staff of approximately 100 personnel from both the OPCW and the United Nations." Ban said the operation would be dangerous because OPCW and UN personnel would need to move "across active confrontation lines and in some cases through territory controlled by armed groups that are hostile to the objectives of the joint mission".

"There will be exceedingly complex security challenges related to ensuring a safe operating environment at destruction sites for the length of time needed to conduct the activities of the joint mission," he said. "The timelines associated with this destruction phase would be ambitious under the most peaceful and benign of circumstances."

Ban said he would appoint a special co-ordinator to oversee the joint operation and liaise with the United Nations, The Hague-based OPCW and the Syrian government. The mission would maintain a "light footprint", deploying only the personnel needed at any given time, and would operate out of Cyprus and Damascus, Ban said. The OPCW would cover its direct costs, Ban said, while the UN contribution would be funded from the United Nations' regular budget. The OPCW and United Nations would establish separate but complementary trust funds to ensure that ample financial resources were available for the operation.

While the Syrian government would provide security in the initial phases of the demolition programme, Ban said that in the third and final phase it was "highly probable that assistance by other member states will be required in the areas of the provision of both technical and operational advice, support and equipment, as well as security". Russia, Syria's longtime ally and arms supplier, has offered to assist with the demolition process. The security council will discuss Ban's recommendations later this week, UN diplomats have said. Bashar al-Assad's Syrian government, fighting a civil war in which more than 100,000 people have died according to UN figures, agreed to destroy the chemical weapons after a sarin gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus killed hundreds of people on 21 August and led to threats of US air strikes. Assad's government and rebels trying to end his rule blame each other for what was the world's worst chemical attack in 25 years. Western governments say a UN investigation of the incident indirectly implicates forces loyal to Assad. The security council adopted a resolution late in September that demands Syria abandon its chemical weapons programme. Shortly before that Assad's government acceded to the chemical weapons convention that bans poison gas arsenals. That resolution was based on a joint US-Russia deal agreed in Geneva during September.

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