Syria chemical weapons inspections ‘to start next week’

International inspectors will get to work destroying Syria’s chemical arsenal by next week, once a document drawn up to avert military strikes is agreed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on Friday.

The OPCW’s 41-member Executive Council will meet in The Hague later on Friday to discuss the draft which lays out what US Secretary of State John Kerry has called the “rules and regulations” of Syrian chemical disarmament, which Damascus has signed up to.

Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons as part of a US-Russian agreement made earlier this month, worked out as Washington threatened military action in response to an August 21 chemical weapons attack outside Damascus it blamed on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Besides weapons locations declared by Damascus as part of the Russia-US deal, inspectors will also be able to visit “any other site identified by a State Party as having been involved in the Syrian chemical weapons programme,” says the draft document seen by reporters.

It says however that such matters could be resolved through “consultations and co-operation” and that the OPCW’s Director General Ahmet Uzumcu can deem claims of hidden chemical weapons “unwarranted”.