BICOM

A report in the Wall Street Journal says that Israeli and United States’ intelligence agencies believe that the Assad regime has already moved its supplies of chemical weapons to approximately fifty sites across Syria, complicating both the potential Russian-proposed disarmament plan and any future US-led military strike.

The report claims that the secretive Syrian elite Unit 450, a branch of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre which oversees the Assad regime’s chemical weapons programme, has moved chemical materials and munitions as recently as last week and has been doing so for several months. Israeli officials have warned on numerous occasions against the dangers of Syria’s chemical stockpile being smuggled into the hands of dangerous Assad allies such as Hezbollah. However, the report quotes a US military official who said that although US and Israeli intelligence have a less accurate picture than six months ago, they still believe that they know where most Syrian chemical weapons are located.

Such dispersal would make the practicalities of disarming Syria’s chemical weapons more complex, the implementation of which was discussed in talks which began yesterday between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva. Kerry said that any transfer of Syrian weapons would need to be “verifiable and timely” and that words are “not enough” from the Assad regime. Meanwhile, Syria yesterday applied to the United Nations to become a signatory to the chemical weapons convention although President Assad appeared to add conditions to his regime’s chemical disarmament. In an interview to be broadcast on Russian television, he said that the United States must first lift the threat of military strikes and stop arming Syrian opposition groups.

Meanwhile, three mortars from the fighting in Syria landed on Israeli territory yesterday in the Golan Heights. The IDF assessed that the incident, one of several during recent months, was not deliberate.