BEIRUT — Syria will cooperate fully with U.N. inspectors charged with securing and destroying the country’s chemical weapons stockpile, the nation’s prime minister said Saturday.
The comments from Wael al-Halqi came a day after the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to purge Syria of its chemical weapons program.
The U.N. resolution, passed after two weeks of negotiations, marked a major breakthrough in the paralysis that has gripped the council since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011.
“This resolution is in line with Syria’s approach toward joining the chemical weapons convention,” said al-Halqi in an interview with Lebanon’s Al Manar TV. “Syria will stand by what it promised. We will cooperate and facilitate the work of the inspectors. We have provided lists with the chemical weapons we have, and they can check all our institutions.”
The U.N. resolution allows the start of a mission to rid Syria’s regime of its estimated 1,000-ton chemical arsenal by mid-2014. It also calls for consequences if President Bashar Assad’s regime fails to comply, although those will depend on the council passing another resolution in the event of noncompliance.
The vote also enshrined a plan adopted by the world’s chemical weapons watchdog that lays out benchmarks and timelines for cataloging, quarantining and destroying Syria’s chemical arms, their precursors and delivery systems.
The dizzying diplomatic developments of the past two weeks are rooted in the Aug. 21 poison-gas attack that killed hundreds of civilians in a Damascus suburb. The U.S. blamed the Assad regime for the attack and threatened to launch punitive missile strikes.
That set in motion a flurry of diplomatic maneuvering that led eventually to Friday’s Security Council resolution.
For the first time, the council also endorsed the road map for a political transition in Syria adopted by key nations in June 2012 and called for an international conference to be convened “as soon as possible” to implement it.
Speaking to Al Manar, al-Halqi said the Syrian government is ready to “negotiate with opposition forces both inside and outside of Syria — if they’re willing to.” But he also questioned whether the main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, can bring armed groups on the ground to the negotiating table.
Inside Syria on Saturday, rebels including members of an al-Qaeda-linked group captured a military post on the border with Jordan after four days of fighting.
