Chemical weapons watchdog says half of Syria inspection work done

The world’s chemical weapons watchdog said Thursday it had completed half of its inspection of Syria’s arsenal.

“We have done nearly 50 percent of the verification work,” Malik Ellahi, a political adviser on Syria for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told journalists in The Hague, according to Agence France-Presse.

The OPCW intends to accomplish its mission of dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons stock by mid-2014.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning OPCW, along with the United Nations, have had a team of 60 experts and support staff in Syria since the beginning of October. They aim to carry out the terms of a U.N. Security Council resolution on destroying Syria’s chemical weapons.

The resolution was adopted following a U.S.-Russian deal that came in the wake of an Aug. 21 sarin gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus.

The United States threatened military action against the Syrian government in response to the attack, despite the President Bashar al-Assad’s denial of responsibility.

(With AFP)