Libya ships out last chemical weapons

Libya has shipped the last of its chemical weapons stocks out of the country, officials said Tuesday, under a UN-backed plan to ensure the arsenal could not fall into the wrong hands.

The move will ease fears that extremists like the Daesh group could gain access to the weapons in Libya, which has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi.
A senior security official told AFP the stocks, including 23 tanks of chemicals, were shipped out on a Danish vessel on Saturday from the port of Misrata, under the supervision of the United Nations, and were destined for Germany.
The stocks had been stored in the central Jafa area, about 200 km south of Sirte where Libyan pro-government forces are battling extremists, he said.
“We as Libyans did not want these weapons, especially during the current security situation and with the presence of Daesh in the region,” the security official said.
The deputy prime minister of Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA), Mussa El-Koni, confirmed the operation.
“All of Libya’s chemical arsenal has been shipped out of the country,” he told AFP. “This is good news for Libya, and for the peace of Libya, and we thank all the countries that participated and the UN.”
The Danish government had earlier this month offered to send a container vessel, a support ship and 200 staff to handle the operation, coordinated by the UN-backed Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
In an e-mailed statement to AFP, the OPCW said: “We are not in a position to disclose operational details of an ongoing effort.”
It specified however that the stocks in question “are industrial chemicals in wide use as well as precursor chemicals that are several stages away from being actual chemical weapons.”
A German Defense Ministry spokesman said the shipment would arrive in Germany “in the coming weeks” and contained “about 500 tons of toxic chemical products” that would be destroyed by GEKA, Germany’s state-owned company for disposing of chemical weapons.
“These chemical products can be used to produce toxic gases or warfare agents, but are not toxic gases or warfare agents,” the spokesman said.

Source: Arab News