Posted on 05/13/2015 4:31:12 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
International inspectors have found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at a military research site in Syria that had not been declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
Samples taken by experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition and Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in December and January tested positive for chemical precursors needed to make the toxic agents, the sources told Reuters on the condition of anonymity because the information is confidential.
"This is a pretty strong indication they have been lying about what they did with sarin," one diplomatic source said. "They have so far been unable to give a satisfactory explanation about this finding."
In 2013, the United States threatened military intervention against Syria's government after sarin gas attacks in August of that year killed hundreds of residents in Ghouta, a rebel-controlled suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus.
But the Damascus government forestalled foreign intervention by agreeing to a U.S.- and Russian-brokered deal under which it joined the OPCW, admitting to having a chemicals weapons program and promising to eliminate it.
The government of President Bashar al-Assad last year handed over 1,300 tonnes of chemical arms to a joint U.N.-OPCW mission for destruction. But Damascus has denied using sarin or any chemical weapons in battle during Syria's continuing civil war.
The diplomatic sources said the sarin and VX nerve samples were taken from the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, a government agency where Western intelligence agencies say Syria developed biological and chemical weapons.
Asked about the diplomats' account, OPCW spokesman Peter Sawczak said: "Obviously we are working to clarify Syria's declaration. I cannot discuss any details of that process, but in due course the assessment team will issue a report."
(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.reuters.com ...
Bump
ah...the stuff that was moved from Iraq
That is unexpected! Who would have guessed this would happen even after Obama’s red line, and his Russian-mediated solution to the problem.
I don’t care if it does. We don’t need Obama installing an ISIS government in Syria.
Yep, exactly. No one will ever convince me that ISIS and radical muslim regimes were NOT Obama’s endgame..
Looks like they found Iraq’s WMD.
Nothing to see here.
“This is a pretty strong indication they have been lying about what they did with sarin,” //
If i knew how to use this website better, i would have crossed out sarin, put uranium, and referred to the Iran nuke deal.
July 2012, Investors Business Daily...
Syria's Chemical Weapons Came From Saddam's Iraq
In 2006, former Iraqi general Georges Sada, second in command of the Iraqi Air Force who served under Saddam Hussein before he defected, wrote a comprehensive book, "Saddam's Secrets."
It details how the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria in advance of the U.S.-led action to eliminate Hussein's WMD threat.
As Sada told the New York Sun, two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, and special Republican Guard units loaded the planes with chemical weapons materials.
There were 56 flights disguised as a relief effort after a 2002 Syrian dam collapse.
There were also truck convoys into Syria. Sada's comments came more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."
Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence observed large truck convoys leaving Iraq and entering Syria in the weeks and months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, told a private conference of former weapons inspectors and intelligence experts held in Arlington, Va., in 2006.
According to Shaw, ex-Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, went to Iraq in December 2002 and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
Anticipating the invasion, his job was to supervise the removal of such weapons and erase as much evidence of Russian involvement as possible.
http://blog.usni.org/2012/07/20/iraq-chemical-weapons-moved-to-syria-before-2003-invasion
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/071912-618875-syria-chemical-weapons-came-from-iraq-.htm
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