UNSC APPROVES JOINT UN-OPCW MISSION TO DESTROY SYRIA’S CHEMICAL WEAPONS

        New York, 7 Dzul Hijja 1434 / 12 October 2013 ( MINA ) – The UN Security Council has approved the joint UN mission with the global chemical weapons watchdog to oversee the destruction of Syria’s stockpiles and production facilities on Friday.

       Accordingly, up to 100 experts from UN and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will be deployed in a multi-phase operation to carry out last month’s Council resolution on eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons, scheduled for completion by 30 June, 2014.

       “We have a very tight deadline, but the United Nations is committed to work closely with the OPCW to get the job done. And I am just as committed and determined to make progress in the political and humanitarian tracks for the sake of the Syrian people,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

       The Council passed a resolution after Syria agreed to join the Chemical Weapons Convention following a chemical weapons attack in August that killed hundreds of people in Ghouta, a Damascus suburb.

       An advance team of experts and support staff from the OPCW and the UN have been in Syria since earlier in the month and already begun inspecting the destruction of Syria’s chemical stockpiles, according to Anadolu Agency report monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).

         Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari accused unnamed nations of already giving the resolution a negative interpretation and trying to “derail it from its lofty purposes.”

        And Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have been harshly critical of Obama’s policy on Syria, dismissed the resolution as “another triumph of hope over reality.” It “contains no meaningful or immediate enforcement mechanisms, let alone a threat of the use of force for the Assad regime’s non-compliance,” they said in a statement that was highly skeptical that Russia would ever approve a threat of force for non-compliance.

         The vote came just hours after the world’s chemical weapons watchdog adopted a U.S.-Russian plan that lays out benchmarks and timelines for cataloguing, quarantining and ultimately destroying Syria’s chemical weapons, their precursors and delivery systems.

         The Security Council resolution enshrines the plan approved by Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, making it legally binding.

         The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Friday night to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, a landmark decision aimed at taking poison gas off the battlefield in the escalating the conflict.

         The vote after two weeks of intense negotiations marked a major breakthrough in the paralysis that has gripped the council since the Syrian uprising began. Russia and China previously vetoed three Western-backed resolutions pressuring President Bashar Assad’s regime to end the violence.

         “Today’s historic resolution is the first hopeful news on Syria in a long time,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the council immediately after the vote, but he and others stressed that much more needs to be done to stop the fighting that has left more 100,000 dead. (T/P04/E1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)