All weapons destroyed or rendered inoperable; next key date Nov 15 in Beirut, Lebanon, The Hague, Netherlands and Damascus, Syria

Syria has destroyed or rendered inoperable all of its declared chemical weapons production and mixing facilities, meeting a major deadline in an ambitious disarmament program, the international chemical weapons watchdog said on Thursday.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which won the Nobel Peace prize last month, said its teams inspected 21 out of 23 chemical weapons sites across the country. The other two were too dangerous to inspect, but the chemical equipment had already been moved to other sites that experts had visited, it said.

Syria "has completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing and filling plants, rendering them inoperable", it said, meeting a deadline to do so no later than Friday.

The next deadline is Nov 15 when the UN Executive Council is to adopt a detailed plan of destruction submitted by Syria to destroy the country's more than 1,000 tons of chemical weapons by mid-2014.

"The Joint Mission is now satisfied that it has verified - and seen destroyed - all of Syria's declared critical production and mixing and filling equipment," the OPCW said.

Under a Russian-US brokered deal, Damascus agreed to destroy all its chemical weapons after Washington threatened to use force in response to the killing of hundreds of people in a sarin attack on the outskirts of Damascus on Aug 21.

It was the world's deadliest chemical weapons incident since Saddam Hussein's forces used poison gas against the Kurdish town of Halabja 25 years ago.

"This was a major milestone in the effort to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons program," Ralf Trapp, an independent chemical weapons disarmament specialist, said.

"Most of the sites and facilities declared by Syria to the OPCW have been inspected, their inventories verified, equipment for chemical weapons production disabled and put beyond use, and some of the unfilled weapons have also been disabled."

At one of those locations, the OPCW said it was able to verify destruction work remotely, while Syrian forces had abandoned the other two sites.

Trapp said it is important to ensure that the remaining facilities can be inspected and their equipment and weapons inventoried and prepared for destruction as soon as possible. The US and its allies blamed government forces for the attack and several earlier incidents. The Syrian president has rejected the charge, blaming rebel brigades.

Under the disarmament timetable, Syria was due to render unusable all production and chemical weapons filling facilities by Friday - a target it has now met. By mid-2014 it must have destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical weapons.

The OPCW mission is being undertaken during Syria's two-and-a-half-year civil war, which has killed more than 100,000 people. The unprecedented conditions had raised concerns that the violence would impede the disarmament, but the OPCW says Syrian authorities have been cooperating with the weapons experts, who have been able to visit all but three of the chemical sites.

Reuters-Xinhua-AFP

(China Daily 11/01/2013 page12)