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During his meeting with senior officials in the United Kingdom, the Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) discussed the issue of chemical weapons in Syria, highlighting it as one of the most primary concerns.
Ambassador Fernando Arias, the Director-General of the (OPCW), visited the United Kingdom on 11 September 2024 for high-level meetings. He engaged with officials on various areas of cooperation, focusing on critical topics such as the situations in Syria and Ukraine.
Ambassador Arias also met with several UK officials, including the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Emissions, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath; Member of Parliament and Under-Secretary of State, Hamish Falconer; and the Director General of Defence and Intelligence at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
Both parties emphasized on the strong cooperative relationship between the (OPCW) and the United Kingdom in advancing the objectives of the Chemical Weapons Convention and addressing the global threat posed by chemical weapons.
The United Kingdom has been an active member of the (OPCW) since the Chemical Weapons Convention came into effect in 1997. The UK also serves on the (OPCW) Executive Council, as the executive body responsible for promoting the effective implementation and compliance with the Convention, as well as supervising the activities of the (OPCW) Technical Secretariat.
Ambassador Arias urged both the United Kingdom and the United States to request verification of the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons, following the 2013 attack in the Damascus countryside where sarin gas was deployed. This attack led the United Nations to threaten the Syrian regime, eventually leading to the regime’s agreement to place its chemical weapons arsenal under (OPCW) control in accordance with UN Resolution 2118, after Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in September 2013.
Moreover, during a speech to the UN Security Council on 5 September 2024, UK Representative Jess Gambert Gray expressed some concerns over the Syrian regime’s potential to secretly develop and produce chemical weapons on a high scale. Noting the regime’s failure to account for thousands of munitions and hundreds of tons of chemicals.
At several (OPCW) Executive Council meetings in 2024, the UK’s representative to the (OPCW), Joanna Roper, described the possibility of the Syrian regime making a full, accurate declaration of its chemical weapons store as remote, and expressed serious concerns about the ongoing chemical activities of the Syrian regime and called on them to cease the development of their chemical weapons program.
chemical_weapons opcw syria UK
