But Experts Say Better to Be Late and Thorough than Too Rushed
By Naftali Bendavid
Updated Dec. 9, 2013 4:37 p.m. ET
The Wall Street Journal
The agency overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons warned Monday that the international community might miss the deadlines for removing the chemicals from the country.
The most lethal weapons, including mustard gas and components of sarin and VX, were supposed to be removed by Dec. 31, according to a schedule set by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons under a U.S.-Russia agreement to dismantle the arsenal.
"It will be quite difficult to meet this timeline," said Ahmet Uzumcu, OPCW director-general.
The rest of the stockpile of chemical weapons was to be shipped out of Syria by Feb. 5 under the plan.
"This is also quite an ambitious timeline; We don't know if we can meet it," Mr. Uzumcu said. "There might be a few days' delay."
He cited the difficulties of getting the chemicals out of a country in the midst of civil war as the main reason for the expected delays.
The plan for destroying the arsenal grew out of a chemical-weapons attack on a Damascus suburb in August that Western leaders blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ''s regime. President Barack Obama threatened a military strike to retaliate. But when Congress proved reluctant, the U.S. and Russia devised the agreement to dismantle the chemical-weapons program.
High stakes, diplomatically and politically, ride on meeting the milestones leading up to the goal of entirely destroying the weapons and facilities by June 2014. Mr. Uzumcu said the mission has proceeded well so far, but it is clearly entering a harder phase.
He spoke in Oslo, Norway, where he is to accept on Tuesday the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize for the OPCW's work in eliminating chemical weapons world-wide.
The OPCW recently concluded that to destroy the chemical weapons safely, they must be shipped elsewhere because of the civil war engulfing Syria.
But that is creating a series of diplomatic and technical challenges. The most immediate one is collecting the chemicals from storage sites around the country, driving them through battlegrounds, and delivering them to the Syrian port of Latakia.
Syria has requested armored vehicles for this purpose, but international leaders are wary of giving the Assad regime equipment it could use against the rebels.
Mr. Uzumcu said the mission is looking for alternatives. OPCW officials have said one option is for a nation to loan Syria the vehicles and take them back afterward.
No country has agreed to accept the most lethal weapons for destruction, so the plan now is to neutralize them aboard a ship provided by the U.S. military, the 648-foot Cape Ray, based in Norfolk, Va.
But an American ship cannot pull into a Syrian port, for security and diplomatic reasons. Denmark and Norway have volunteered ships to transport the chemicals to the Cape Ray, which will likely anchor in international waters in a location that hasn't yet been determined.
But a port must be found where the chemicals can be transferred onto the Cape Ray. This is proving problematic because most countries are reluctant to allow a ship full of lethal weapons to dock.
Chemical weapons have never been destroyed at sea before, so American officials are improvising. The Cape Ray, a cargo ship, is being outfitted with a neutralization system from a military facility in Aberdeen, Md. The chemicals will be neutralized using hot water and caustic chemicals.
OPCW officials said the process is safe, and they emphasize that nothing will be dumped at sea. But that hasn't reassured everyone in the region.
"We are very worried and very concerned," said Gillane Allam, a former assistant minister of foreign affairs in Egypt. "There are so many questions that are unanswered, and in an area where there are so many militants."
There are another 800 metric tons of less dangerous chemicals that won't be neutralized at sea. However no country has agreed to host the destruction of the them.
Forty-two companies have expressed interest in doing the job, but they must get approval from the countries where the material will be destroyed.
Richard Guthrie, a chemical-weapons expert based in Britain, said officials should be willing to let deadlines slip if necessary because the greatest danger comes from being rushed.
"When there is pressure, that is when there is some chance of an inadvertent problem," Mr. Guthrie said.
Mr. Uzumcu expressed confidence the OPCW mission would ultimately be successful. The OPCW has previously said it verified Syria's dismantling of all its declared chemical weapons manufacturing equipment by a Nov. 1 deadline.
"We had a good start," Mr. Uzumcu said. "Our experts are working in a very difficult environment."
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