BICOM

It was announced last night that a draft United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution had finally been agreed over disarming Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.

The UK’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Mark Lyall Grant said via Twitter that a “binding and enforceable” draft resolution had been concluded by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Foreign Secretary William Hague had earlier in the day told Al Arabiya that “it needs to be as strong a resolution as possible,” in order to compel the Assad regime to comply with a US-Russian accord announced in Geneva earlier this month to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons.

Wrangling over the resolution between the UK, United States and France on one side and Russia and China on the other had focused on Russian and Chinese opposition to permit the use of force against the Assad regime in the event that it refuses to comply. Russia also objected to specifying that Assad’s forces were responsible for a chemical attack in late August. The draft resolution does not apportion blame for the August incident and according to Reuters, it states that if Syria fails to act in accordance with the resolution, the Security Council will impose military or economic punitive measures under Chapter Seven of the UN charter, but this would require a second resolution.

The French delegation apparently said that a closed door session of the full UN Security Council would debate the draft resolution this evening. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed that an “understanding” had been reached over the wording while US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power commented “tonight we have a shared draft resolution that was the outcome of intense diplomacy and negotiations over the past two weeks.”

Meanwhile, Syria’s President Assad told a Lebanese newspaper that his country possesses “weapons that are far more important and sophisticated” than its chemical arsenal which “can blindside Israel in the blink of an eye.”