Ministers have been briefed about the possibility of helping dispose of Bashar al-Assad's chemical arsenal at two British ports
By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
8:20PM GMT 29 Nov 2013
12 Comments
Britain could play a prominent role in the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons after ministers received briefings from officials on the potential use of facilities at two UK ports to dispose of Bashar-al-Assad's arsenal.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is expected to embrace a set of proposals for destroying the Syrian weapons at meetings next week, and it is understood that incinerator facilities at Southampton and Ellesmere Port could be offered as plants to destroy chemicals shipped from the country.
Half of Syria's 1,300 tonne stockpile is believed to be made up of extremely toxic materials used in making Sarin and Vx gases, as well as a small amount of mustard gas. Those more dangerous chemicals are now set to be destroyed at sea by the US Navy, after public backlashes over the risks of the process forced governments in Finland, Austria and elsewhere to withdraw tentative offers to help.
They will be shipped to a massive specialist US vessel, the MV Cape Ray, where they will be rendered harmless by a process known as hydrolysis, probably while sailing through the Mediterranean.
The rest of the arsenal is made up of chemicals that pose risks similar to standard industrial materials routinely destroyed by commercial companies - and it is those that could be shipped to Britain.
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Whitehall officials are understood to have been looking at the idea and a Foreign Office minister was briefed two days ago.
"Broadly there are two different types of materials involved. We welcome plans for the disposal of those materials that do raise chemical weapons proliferation concerns and know that the remainder can be destroyed by standard commercial services," a Foreign Office official said. "We're keeping an eye on it. Ministers are being constantly briefed on this, particularly as the issue is moving so fast."
The maritime destruction plan that the OPCW has been forced to resort to for the most dangerous materials is laden with risks.
"It's not really a waste stream that can be easily dealt with at sea but we can see that it probably has to be done in this way at this stage," said Paul Johnston, principal scientist at Greenpeace Laboratories at Exeter University. "There will be difficulties with the handling procedures and using sea water for hydrolysis onboard such a large vessel. It would have been preferable to have done this on land at one of the specialist sites in the US and Russia."
Activists said the government must prepare the public if any part of the Syrian weapons arsenal is brought to the UK.
"The threat from Syria's chemical weapons may be being dealt with but we need reassurances that treatment and disposal will be safe," said Paul De Zylva of Friends of the Earth. "Historically, the seas have always been used as a dumping ground – out of sight, out of mind. This shows that they are still vulnerable and we should be concerned about any waste dumping, let alone toxic waste like this."
But OPCW officials are set to tell the public next week that tonnes of the material is "common or garden waste" that can be destroyed under standard commercial contracts.
The Hague-base body said more than two dozen companies have expressed their interest in destroying Syria's chemical weapons stockpile after it asked companies to express interest in destroying nearly 800 tonnes of chemicals and 7.7 million litres of effluent, or liquid waste, from the ship.
Timo Piekkari, chief executive at Finland's state-owned Ekokem, said it was ready to work on the material. "We have expressed our interest to bid on some of the chemicals in the list ... that are pretty similar to what we regularly handle," Mr Piekkari said.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a director of Bio-Secure, a consultancy on chemical weapons, said "needless hysteria" in European countries had tied officials hands, hampering international efforts to dispose of the materials by the end of June. The extremely ambitious deadline was set in a ground breaking US deal with Russia which averted military strikes after an August chemical attack that killed hundreds of people in the suburbs of Damascus, and is supposed to see all such weapons removed from the Syrian civil war.
"Most of this stuff is no different from the materials driven up and down the motorways of Britain every day but there is public anxiety out there that needs to be dispelled," he said. "Europe has shouted loudly for chemical weapon destruction but has collectively sat on its hands, leaving the US to come in and do the heavy lifting."
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Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10485302/Britain-could-play-key-role-in-destroying-Syrian-chemical-weapons.html
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"Europe has shouted loudly for chemical weapon destruction but has collectively sat on its hands, leaving the US to come in and do the heavy lifting."
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