MOSCOW, November 19 (RIA Novosti) – The international chemical weapons watchdog overseeing the removal of Syria’s stockpile of poison gas is in talks with several countries to host the material, Russia’s foreign minister said in an interview published Tuesday.
Albania last week refused to be the location for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, joining other countries that have already declined, which include Norway, Belgium and France.
“There are talks with other states, other options are being studied about that I prefer not to speak about, as they are under consideration,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States, Syria agreed in September to destroy its chemical weapons by mid-2014 and revealed 23 chemical weapons sites on its territory.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal, earlier this month backed a proposal by Damascus for the arms to be eliminated outside Syria.
The United States and some other countries accused Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government of being behind an August 21 chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that Washington said left more than 1,400 dead.
Lavrov said Russia investigated an earlier alleged use of chemical weapons in the Syrian city of Aleppo, on March 19, after a request from the Syrian government.
The experts’ main conclusion was that the type of sarin nerve agent used in that incident was homemade, Lavrov said.
This would possibly indicate that the gas was used by rebel forces, rather than the government, he said.
“Russia only said that the analysis shows that these components were homemade. No one has called these conclusions into question,” Lavrov said.
He said the study was aimed at finding the truth as “the use of these weapons by anyone, both the government and armed groups, is unacceptable.”
