Originally published on January 30, 2014
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Reuters reports that Syria has only given up less than 5 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal and will miss an upcoming deadline to send all toxic agents abroad for destruction, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday (January 29).
An anonymous source told Reuters that the deliveries were made in two shipments this month to the northern Syrian port of Latakia, and totalled 4.1 percent of the roughly 1,300 tonnes of toxic agents reported by Damascus to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Early this month, Syria began removing chemical weapons from its territory as part of an internationally backed disarmament program spearheaded by Russia and the United States but until now delayed by war.
Syrian authorities removed the first batch of chemical weapons from two sites among many scattered across the country.
A total of nine barrels of material were moved onto Russian-supplied armoured trucks. The U.S. supplied container drums and GPS locators to enhance security for the sensitive cargo.
A convoy of Russian trucks and Syrian security forces moved overland to the port of Latakia where the material was loaded onto a Danish cargo vessel, which set sail for an undisclosed port in Italy.
There the cargo was moved to the U.S. vessel MV Cape Ray, which then sailed to open water in the Mediterranean where the chemical agents were destroyed.
China supplied ambulances, and Finland sent an emergency response team for added security were anything go wrong during the move.
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