The inspectors responsible for tracking down Syria’s chemical arms stockpile and verifying its destruction plan to start work there by Tuesday.
They will face their tightest deadlines ever and work right in the heart of a war zone, according to a draft decision.
The decision is the key to any UN resolution on Syria’s chemical weapons programme.
The five permanent members of the deeply divided UN Security Council reached agreement on Thursday on a resolution to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons. A vote depends on how soon the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons can adopt its plan for securing and destroying Syria’s stockpile.
The draft agreed upon by Russia, China, the United States, France and Britain includes two legally binding demands – that Syria abandons its chemical stockpile and allows unfettered access to the chemical weapons experts. If Syria fails to comply, the draft says the Security Council would need to adopt a second resolution to impose possible military and other actions on Damascus under Chapter Seven of the UN charter.
Issam Khalil, a member of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ruling Baath party, portrayed the deal as an American diplomatic failure. “The resolution does not include threats or even possibilities of misinterpretations in a way that would let America and its allies to take advantage of it as they did in Iraq,” Khalil said in Damascus.
The diplomatic push to find some agreement on Syria was triggered by an August 21 poison gas attack that killed hundreds of civilians in a Damascus suburb and President Barack Obama’s subsequent threat to use military force. The US and Russia agree that Syria has roughly 1,000 metric tons of chemical weapons agents and precursors.