Syria submits initial outline of its chemical arsenal

Syrian rebel fighters celebrate Thursday after a battle in Idlib province. Syria’s main Western-backed opposition group issued a warning Friday about the expanding influence of al-Qaida-backed militants.
Syrian rebel fighters celebrate Thursday after a battle in Idlib province. Syria’s main Western-backed opposition group issued a warning Friday about the expanding influence of al-Qaida-backed militants.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Syria has sent the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons an “initial declaration” outlining its weapons program, the organization said Friday, in keeping with the agreement Russia and the U.S. brokered to have Syria give up its chemical-weapons arsenal.

photo

AP

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking Friday at the State Department, said he had “a fairly long conversation” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about a “firm and strong” U.N. resolution.

Michael Luhan, the organization’s spokesman, told The Associated Press the declaration is “being reviewed by our verification division,” but details of it will not be released.

A senior official in President Barack Obama’s administration said that the United States was encouraged by the initial inventory.

“We were pleasantly surprised by the completeness of their declaration,” said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “It was better than expected.”

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague, polices a global treaty known as the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, which bars the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical arms. The organization relies on a global network of more than a dozen top laboratories to analyze field samples.


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U.S. officials said last week that the United States and Russia agreed that Syria had roughly 1,000 metric tons of chemical-weapons agents and precursors, including blister agents, such as sulfur and mustard gas, and nerve agents like sarin. The United States also has identified 45 sites associated with Syria’s chemical-weapons program and says it believes half have “exploitable” quantities of chemical-warfare materials. However, officials said Syrian forces had been moving stocks so the locations could have changed.

In the aftermath of the U.N. report that concluded sarin had been used in an attack on the outskirts of Damascus last month, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is looking at ways to fast-track moves to secure and destroy Syria’s arsenal of poison gas and nerve agents as well as its production facilities.

However, diplomatic efforts to speed up the process are moving slowly. A meeting initially scheduled for Sunday at which the organization’s 41-nation executive council was to have discussed a U.S.-Russian plan to swiftly rid Syria of chemical weapons was postponed Friday, and no new date was immediately set. No reason was given for the postponement.

U.S. State Department spokesman Marie Harf said she did not know why the meeting was postponed but said Syria’s initial declaration was a step Washington was seeking “and we’ll go from there.”

Under a U.S.-Russia agreement brokered last weekend in Geneva, inspectors are to be on the ground in Syria by November. During that month, they are to complete their initial assessment and all mixing and filling equipment for chemical weapons is to be destroyed.

All components of the chemical-weapons program are to be removed from the country or destroyed by mid-2014.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ plan of action will be backed up by a U.N. Security Council resolution, and negotiations remain underway on the text of such a resolution.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he talked with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, about Syria’s chemical weapons early Friday.

“I had a fairly long conversation with Foreign Minister Lavrov,” Kerry said in Washington. “We talked about the cooperation which we both agreed to continue to provide, moving not only toward the adoption of the [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] rules and regulations but also a resolution that is firm and strong within the United Nations. We will continue to work on that.”

In an interview with Fox News Channel aired Wednesday, Syrian President Bashar Assad blamed terrorists for the Aug. 21 chemical attack, which the U.S. says killed more than 1,400 people, including hundreds of children. He said evidence that terrorist groups have used sarin gas has been turned over to Russia and that Russia, through one of its satellites, has evidence that the rockets in the attack were launched from another area.

While the U.N. report did not lay blame, many experts interpreting the report said all indications were that the attack was conducted by Assad forces.

WARNING FROM OPPOSITION

Also Friday, Syria’s main Western-backed opposition group warned Friday that the expanding influence of al-Qaida-linked militants in the rebel movement is undermining its struggle for a free Syria.

The warning came as a cease-fire ended fighting near the Turkish border between the mainstream rebels and fighters belonging to the al-Qaida offshoot known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. During the battle, the jihadis overran the town of Azaz.

As the cease-fire took hold, al-Qaida militants fought heavy street battles against Kurdish gunmen in northern Syria.

The infighting was some of the worst in recent months between forces seeking to bring down Assad, and it threatened to further fragment an opposition movement outgunned by the regime.

The Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition group, condemned the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in a strongly worded statement, saying the jihadis’ push to establish an Islamic state goes against the principles of the Syrian revolution.

“ISIL no longer fights the Assad regime. Rather, it is strengthening its positions in liberated areas at the expense of the safety of civilians,” the statement said. “ISIL is inflicting on the people the same suppression of the Baath Party and the Assad regime.”

Al-Qaida-linked fighters in Syria have been some of the most effective forces on the battlefield, fighting alongside the rebels’ Free Syrian Army against government forces. But the two factions have turned their guns on each other, and turf wars and retaliatory killings have evolved into ferocious battles that have effectively become a war within a war in northern and eastern Syria, leaving hundreds dead on both sides.

Late Thursday, fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and the Free Syrian Army agreed to an immediate cease-fire in Azaz, activists and opposition groups said. The two sides also agreed to free fighters captured by each side, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The deal calls for setting up a checkpoint between the two sides. They also agreed to take disputes before an Islamic council that would soon be established.

But as the fighting in Azaz died down, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant fighters fought against Kurdish gunmen in heavy streets battles in the northern province of Raqqa, the Observatory said. Such battles between the two groups have been common in the past months.

Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant members in Raqqa also publicly shot to death an army officer they had captured earlier because he belongs to Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory.

Abdullah Hassan, official spokesman for the local council in Raqqa, said via Skype that “all armed battalions and fighters, as well as civilians, are opposed to ISIL.”

“These people do not have the same goals as us. We didn’t liberate Azaz for them to come and occupy it again only this time with the rule of Islam,” he said referring to the town that was among the first areas in northern Syria to fall into the hands of rebels.

U.S. VETERAN RELEASED

Meanwhile, a U.S. Army veteran accused of fighting alongside an al-Qaida-affiliated group of Syrian rebels has been released from jail after a secret plea deal.

Eric Harroun, 31, of Phoenix had been charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and faced up to life in prison.

But under a plea agreement entered Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., Harroun pleaded guilty to an obscure law regulating export of munitions. He was sentenced to time served. He had been jailed since returning to the U.S. in March.

Prosecutors first accused Harroun of fighting alongside the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra, one of many Syrian rebel groups seeking to topple Assad. But defense lawyers argued that Harroun, who suffered a serious injury, was confused about which rebel group he had joined. According to authorities, Harroun had said he traveled to Syria to join the Free Syrian Army but ended up in a truck with al-Nusra, and fighting alongside the group, after retreating from a battle.

Information for this article was contributed by Mike Corder, Bassem Mroue, Matthew Barakat, Deb Riechmann and Yasmine Saker of The Associated Press and by Nick Cumming-Bruce and Michael R. Gordon of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/21/2013

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