Top US official sceptical over Syrian chemical manifest

The United States has a sceptical attitude over Syrian regime due to unkept promises on annihilation of its chemical arsenal, according to a top US official. US Permanent Representative to the United Nations Samantha Power made a statement to reporters after Sigrid Kaag, the Special Coordinator of the joint mission of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the United Nations, had issued a briefing at the UN Security Council on Tuesday and reminded that 1,400 Syrian civilians, 400 of whom were children, were killed during the violent chemical attack in Syria on August 21, 2013. "We obviously bring scepticism born of years of dealing with this regime, years of obfuscation in other contexts, and of course a lot of broken promises within the context of this current war", said Power, noting they suspected a cooperation with the regime due its broken promises. She reminded during her speech that the Assad regime cooperated with the joint OPCW/UN mission, which inspected 21 out of 23 chemical weapon sites in Syria and the rest two sites were not inspected due to transportation risks. "The chemical weapons agreement and implementation has not changed the US position on Assad," Power said, adding a man who gassed his people - and who used Scuds and all other forms of terror against his people - was not fit to govern those people. On the other hand, the Director General of the OPCW Ahmet Uzumcu made a statement in OPCW, stating the most viable alternative for destroying Syria’s chemical arsenal would be outside the country due to the ongoing armed conflict in Syria. Uzumcu stated that Syria cited "practical challenges" of destroying chemical weapons amid its civil war and "resource limitations" as reasons for shifting the destruction outside the country. Syria declared 30 production, filling and storage facilities, eight mobile filling units and three chemical weapons-related facilities. They contained about 1,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, mostly in the form of raw precursors, 290 tonnes of loaded munitions and 1,230 unfilled munitions. Russia's ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said, "Russia is not going to do the actual destruction of chemical weapons, but Russian participation is quite possible."