UNITED NATIONS, November 6 (RIA Novosti) – The work on demolishing 12 remaining chemical weapons production facilities in Syria is due to begin later this month and is expected to be completed by mid-2015, Gary Quinlan, president of the UN Security Council this month told reporters.
“There are seven hangars and five underground tunnels which need to be destroyed. Destruction is scheduled later this month and likely to be completed around the summer of 2015,” Australia's UN envoy Gary Quinlan said on Wednesday.
“We also had a report on the preparations to destroy a further facility, declared by Syria in addition to those twelve, which was a ricin production facility, which we had known about at an earliest stage,” Quinlan added.
The joint mandate of the UN-OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) mission on the elimination of Syrian chemical arsenal drew to a close on September 30. As part of the operation, all chemical weapons declared by Damascus were removed out of the country.
In late October, OPCW announced that a total of 97.8 percent of chemicals removed from Syria earlier this year have been destroyed.
Syria agreed to place its chemical weapons under international control for further elimination in September 2013, after an unprecedented chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killed almost 1500 civilians triggering worldwide condemnation and menacing a US-led military intervention.
Somewhat later, Damascus joined the Chemical Weapons Convention and handed over documents on its arsenal to OPCW.
