Syria built 30 years ago its chemical arsenal

Damascus lacked the technology and scientific capacity to set its own program, but with the support of foreign allies amassed what is believed to be one of the most deadly arsenals of nerve agents in the world, according to Western military experts."Syria relied heavily on foreign aid at the beginning of its chemical weapons program, but is now believed to have internal capability to produce chemical weapons," said Amy Smithson, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, an expert on nuclear, biological and chemical. In the midst of civil war in Syria, who enters his third year with 80,000 deaths have been reported from the use of chemical weapons by the government of President Bashar Al Assad and also fear that they may fall into the hands of militants seeking destabilize the region. As a result of the wars of 1967, 1973 and 1982, Syria sought to counter the military superiority of Israel. "Syria had to have something to counter Israel," Smithson said to Reuters. Human rights investigators United Nations said on Tuesday they had "reasonable grounds" to believe that they had used limited quantities of chemical weapons in Syria , which is one of the seven countries that have not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, which commits members to totally destroy its reserves. Damascus usually does not comment on its chemical weapons, but in July last year recognized for the first time, with such weapons. The spokesman for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, Jihad Makdissi, told a press conference that the army would not use chemical weapons to crush the rebels, but they could use against foreign forces. Syria still has some chemical munitions at bases around Damascus and have been deployed with artillery shells, said Brigadier General Mustafa al-Sheikh, a defector from the Syrian army. "It's a matter of time until they are used reasonably large warheads," he said. When asked about the comments of Sheikh, a U.S. official told Reuters : "This is a worrying scenario that we are considering." Reports on the use of chemical weapons in the battlefield have been more frequent in recent weeks. Syrian authorities have denied entry to a team of UN inspectors , so have not been able to verify the allegations. Most of the technology for the production of chemical and biological weapons came from "large chemical brokerages Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Austria and Germany," said GlobalSecurity , a provider of information security. None of the reports cited specific companies as suppliers and Syria has said it intends to use chemicals for agriculture.

  

France confirms the use of sarin gas

France is " the certainty that sarin was used in Syria several times ", said Tuesday the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, in a statement, without specifying those responsible for their employment. The analyzes carried out by a French laboratory samples held in Paris "prove the presence of sarin" and "now France is confident that the highly toxic nerve gas was used in Syria several times and localized manner , "the statement said. According to a diplomatic source, the evidence comes from Khobar, on the outskirts of Damascus, where mid-April to two French journalists witnessed the use of toxic gas and collected samples submitted to the French authorities, and Saraqeb in northwest the country, in late April. Fabius said that he gave the results of the analyzes in the morning from Tuesday to Professor Ake Sellstrom, head of the fact-finding mission established by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to discuss the suspected use of chemical weapons in Syria. "We decided to immediately notify the authority of the UN mission and publicly disclose the items in our possession. It is unacceptable that perpetrators of these crimes to benefit from impunity," the minister said in the statement.