Watchdog Agrees to Timetable for Syria Chemical Disarmament

Final Roadmap Would End Disarmament in mid-2014

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has met a deadline of its own on Syria today, finalizing a timetable of “destruction milestones” for the disarmament of Syria’s arsenal.

The details of the plan were not made public, but were presented to the OPCW’s Executive Committee just hours before a deadline threatened to pass. It aims to finalize the disarmament by mid-2014.

That’s an extremely ambitious timetable, and faces several significant obstacles, not the least of which is the ongoing civil war in Syria, which has made accessing certain sites dangeorus, and difficult to do in a timely fashion.

Rebels aside, the OPCW still lacks funding to completely the plan, and perhaps more importantly lacks any place to send the chemicals for neutralization, since every nation approached so far has spurned involvement in a costly, difficult process.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.