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cali

(114,904 posts)
Thu Sep 12, 2013, 06:12 AM Sep 2013

Syria: Russian plan for destruction of chemical weapons leaked

The Russian proposals, leaked to a Russian newspaper on Thursday, lay out a four step plan to be discussed at today's meeting in Geneva between the US Secretary of State and his Russian counterpart.

Under the plans, Syria would first join the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Damascus would then make a declaration of its chemical weapons production and storage facilities, and a team of inspectors would be dispatched to the sites. Finally, agreement would be reached on how the weapons would be destroyed, Kommersant reported citing a Russian diplomatic source.

Exactly who would carry out the decommissioning of the country's stocks of Sarin, VX and mustard gas is not yet clear, but the diplomat raised the possibility of a joint US-Russian effort as part of the Nunn-Lugar programme, a post-cold war arrangement for securing and decommissioning Soviet-era WMD stockpiles.

On Wednesday night Russian news agencies said the Kremlin had "passed the United States a plan for fulfilling the initiative on international control of Syrian chemical weapons".

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10304096/Syria-Russian-plan-for-destruction-of-chemical-weapons-leaked.html

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