Plan for Ridding Syria of Chemical Arms Includes Brute Force and Chemistry

WASHINGTON — The United States and its partners are planning a series of rapid steps to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons program, a strategy that is intended to guard against backsliding by President Bashar al-Assad and limit the time that international experts need to work in the country, according to senior American officials.

A major step is to be taken in early November, when equipment for producing chemicals and filling warheads and bombs with poison gas is to be destroyed by the Syrians under international supervision. That move can be carried out by equipment as simple as sledgehammers and bulldozers.

 

International monitors began the process of destroying that equipment on Sunday. “Missile warheads, aerial bombs and mobile and static mixing and filling units were destroyed and disabled in a number of different ways, including with cutting torches,” said a member of the joint team of experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations, speaking in Damascus on the condition of anonymity according to the team’s policy. “The plan is to do more such destruction and disabling in the coming days.”

But a major centerpiece of the disarmament effort will be a mobile and highly sophisticated system developed by the Pentagon that will probably be set up outside Syria to neutralize large quantities of chemicals transported out of the country. 

The system, known as the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System, is designed to convert chemical agents into compounds that cannot be used for military purposes by mixing them with water and other chemicals and then heating them. 

The system, which the Pentagon says can be operated within 10 days of being shipped to a new location, would be used to neutralize the large quantities of “precursor” chemicals that could be used by the Syrian government to make sarin and other forms of poison gas and thus replenish its chemical weapons arsenal.

A senior State Department official said that the use of the mobile system would provide an “early demonstration” that steps were being taken to shrink Mr. Assad’s chemical program and would make it easier to meet the mid-2014 target for its elimination. 

“It will reduce the possibility that the Syrian regime can change its mind,” added the State Department official, who asked not to be identified because the plan for eliminating Syria’s poison gas program was still being finalized. “It will greatly reduce the size and duration of the international footprint in Syria.” 

The basic plan for eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons program was outlined last month in a framework agreement between American and Russian officials and has been refined in consultation with experts at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international watchdog group. 

While the plan has been endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, its goal is unprecedented: the elimination of a nation’s chemical weapons, agents and equipment on an accelerated schedule in the middle of a civil war. 

The Syrian government’s moves to consolidate its chemical arsenal at sites under its control and the fact that much of its program consists of precursor chemicals in bulk form will facilitate the disarmament effort, officials say. 

International inspectors who recently arrived in Syria have generally had good cooperation with the Assad government. Still, the disarmament effort will depend heavily on the cooperation of the Syrian military and on Russia’s willingness to use its leverage with the Syrian authorities. 

American officials say that while the Syrian government’s preliminary inventory of its chemical weapons program, presented last month to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was more extensive than some experts anticipated, it was not complete.

An early test of the Assad government’s willingness to cooperate, American officials say, will come when the government submits a more formal declaration later this month. 

“It is of the greatest importance that that document be complete,” the State Department official said.

Some experts believe that Mr. Assad may have calculated that there is little chance that his government could use chemical weapons on a large scale again without exposing itself to a military strike by the United States and that he can rehabilitate his international standing by cooperating with the disarmament effort. 

But Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, cautioned that Mr. Assad did not have a “cooperative track record with international nuclear inspectors and may even now be busily hiding some of the man-portable chemical weapons.” 

American officials say that Syria’s chemical weapons include sarin, VX, mustard gas and even ricin.

The basic strategy behind the international disarmament plan is to destroy chemical bombs and warheads where they are or at nearby locations in Syria. 

This would limit the need to transport them, which could expose them to theft by some of the many groups fighting in Syria. Small warheads can be destroyed in special detonation chambers. Large weapons may need to be drained of their chemical agents before they are destroyed. 

Equipment for producing chemical agents and filling munitions with poison gas is to be destroyed by early November. 

To speed up the disarmament process, the large stores of precursor chemicals that can be used to make sarin and other chemical warfare agents are to be taken out of the country well before the middle of next year so they can be neutralized by the mobile systems, according to the current plans. 

“We have a couple and can make some more,” the State Department official said, referring to the mobile systems. 

American officials are expected to operate the systems unless it is decided to base them on Syrian territory.

They have not said where the mobile systems would be located, nor have they provided an estimate of how much the total disarmament effort will cost. 

The officials did not say which country might be responsible for incinerating the residue from the neutralization of the precursor chemicals, which is one way of eliminating that waste. 

The State Department official said that there were “good grounds” to think the target date for eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons program could be met. 

“We take nothing for granted,” he added. “It could go off the rails in many ways, but we are planning for success under both ideal and difficult circumstances.”