February 6, 2014 | Quote
Syria Holding Onto Chemical Weapons?
Syria will miss a second deadline to turn over its chemical weapons components for destruction Wednesday amid a British report that Bashar Assad's regime is stockpiling the weaponry for use in case the country is partitioned.
Syria has delivered only a small fraction of the most dangerous components of its chemical weapons – sarin, mustard and VX gases – all of which were supposed to be handed over by Dec. 31. Delivery of all the less-dangerous industrial chemical components is supposed to be complete by Wednesday.
To date, only 4% of its chemical weapons components have been delivered to the port of Latakia to be loaded onto ships and transported for destruction abroad.
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Emanuele Ottolenghi, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the report has not been confirmed but that it wouldn't be a surprise because such behavior “is in character” for the Assad regime.
“The regime wasn't admitting to even having CW (chemical weapons) until the deal was struck last September,” Ottolenghi said. “Those weapons were always an insurance policy for regime survival, and it's therefore doubtful that the regime would give them up.”