Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa met in Damascus on Saturday with a delegation from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), led by its director-general, Fernando Gonzalez.
The meeting was also attended by Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani, without providing details about the content of the discussions.
The meeting followed a prior request by the OPCW for Syria’s new leadership to secure all relevant sites and protect any documents related to the former regime’s chemical weapons program.
More than a decade ago, Syria agreed to hand over its declared stockpile for destruction, but the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has always been concerned that the declaration was incomplete and that more weapons remained.
With new authorities now in power, the OPCW visit has raised hope Syria will be conclusively rid of such weapons after years of delays and obstructions to the body’s work.
Syria joined the OPCW on Sept. 13, 2013. That same month, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2118 concerning Syria’s chemical weapons following a chemical attack by the Bashar al-Assad regime on Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, which resulted in a mass killing.
There has been widespread concern about the fate of Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons since al-Assad’s dramatic overthrow at the hands of the opposition.
The OPCW has also expressed concern that valuable evidence may have been destroyed in intense Israeli strikes on Syrian army sites in the wake of his fall.
Israel has said its targets included chemical weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of “extremists.”
In 2021, OPCW members stripped Syria of voting rights after a probe blamed Damascus for poison gas attacks carried out after they had claimed the stockpile was eliminated.
In November 2023, France issued international arrest warrants against al-Assad, his brother Maher and two generals on suspicion of complicity in the 2013 chemical attacks.
