International
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel expressed "concern" Thursday over the Syrian government's delay in removing chemical weapons materials which are due to be destroyed under a deal brokered by the U.S. and Russia.
During a visit to Poland, Hagel said he had asked his Russian counterpart to put pressure on Damascus to comply with the deal, and urged the Syrian government to intensify efforts to transport chemical arms to port for destruction.
"I do not know what the Syrian government's motives are — if this is incompetence — or why they are behind in delivering these materials," Hagel told reporters in Warsaw. "They need to fix this."
The Syrian government’s willingness to dispose of its vast chemical weapons stockpiles staved off threats of a military strike on Syria.
The U.S. on Wednesday said that military force remained an option, although the diplomatic route was preferred.
The opposition accuses Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of capitalizing on the chemical cleanup to paint himself as a partner in peace to the foreign powers wrangling for a solution to Syria’s civil war. Activists describe the chemical weapons cleanup as a diplomatic distraction from the ongoing war, which has killed upwards of 130,000 since violence broke out in 2011.
U.S. Ambassador Robert Mikulak also criticized Syria's inaction in a statement to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on Thursday.
"The effort to remove chemical agent and key precursor chemicals from Syria has seriously languished and stalled," Mikulak said, noting to date that just 4 percent of the "priority one" chemicals declared by the Syrian Arab Republic had been removed, and roughly the same percentage of "priority two" chemicals. Priority one chemicals include sarin gas, which is believed to have been behind the massacre of hundreds of civilians in a Damascus suburb in August.
The Syrian government has attributed the delays to "security concerns," saying it needs additional equipment to ensure their safe transportation — a claim Mikulak rejected.
Timelines adopted last year required that 100 percent of priority one chemicals be eliminated by Dec. 31, 2013, while the deadline for removing priority two chemicals is Feb. 5. That deadline will also not be met.
"Syria's requests for equipment and open-ended delaying of the removal operation could ultimately jeopardize the carefully timed and coordinated multi-state removal and destruction effort," said Mikulak.
Meanwhile, peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition continued on Thursday, with U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi reporting little progress.
In an afternoon update to the media in Geneva, Brahimi said he hoped the two sides would "draw some lessons" from the first round of talks, scheduled to end on Friday, in hopes of becoming better organized for the next round.
Terrorism was among the topics discussed on Thursday, Brahimi said, although there was no agreement on how to deal with it.
"We had tense moments and also rather promising moments," he said.
Opposition delegation spokesman Louay Safi told reporters that the two sides had spoken about stopping the violence in Syria, noting that the opposition presented evidence of government massacres within residential neighborhoods.
Safi said the government wanted to speak first about issues such as ending the violence and bringing humanitarian aid, instead of dealing with the trickier issue of a political transition. "We believe this is the wrong sequence," he added.
The opposition views a transitional government as the first step toward a political solution and has insisted that Assad step down.
The Geneva I communique, a never-implemented road map developed during 2012 talks, calls for a transitional government, but the regime denies that the document requires Assad to resign.
Al Jazeera and wire services
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