Faced with growing public protests, the Albanian government has formally rejected NATO requests to take responsibility for the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons program.
The tiny Adriatic nation was pushed to accept the plan by the US, which cited it having destroyed its own relatively small chemical arsenal recently. Albanian officials insisted that they don’t have the technology nor the capacity to handle the huge Syrian arsenal, however.
Finishing the disarmament inside Syria seems extremely unlikely, with the nation embroiled in an ever-worsening civil war, but attempts to con someone else into taking on 1,000+ tons of chemicals have so far failed, with Albanian joining Norway and Lebanon in spurning such calls.
Some are worrying that this could derail the disarmament plans entirely, but the OPCW, which is overseeing the disarmament, insists that the US and Russia have “alternatives” to these hosts. It seems their preference is to throw the arms at some smallish, neutral nation, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only choice.