CONTRASTING APPROACHES TO SYRIA NOTED IN ARAB MEDIA
Regime will miss deadline for chemical weapons destruction
Even as Iran continues to supply the regime of Syrian president Bashar Assad with weapons and military supplies, Israel continues to treat wounded Syrians in Israeli hospitals. The contrasting actions have not gone unnoticed, receiving coverage in Arab media outlets and being discussed on social networks. However, the violence in Syria again threatened to spill over into its neighbors on Thursday, as a large explosion shattered the Bab Al Salama border crossing into Turkey and sporadic violence between Sunni and Shi’ite factions continued to plague neighboring Lebanon. Meanwhile, the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced this week that it is now impossible for the regime to meet a 30 June deadline for the destruction of its arsenal of chemical weapons.
Only 11% of the chemical agents have thus far been removed from Syria and destroyed, and the regime’s new promise to deliver all the remaining agents to the port of Latakia, where they will be taken to a US ship with facilities for their destruction, by the end of May is “unacceptable” according to a UN source. “There’s no question of haggling, the deadlines have been agreed and they must be respected,” the UN source said.
“They’re going to be several months over the destruction deadline, but they’re saying if it’s all out of the country by June 30 then so what?” a diplomatic source said.