News Manager
Milforums News Bot
By Anthony Deutsch THE HAGUE (Reuters) - At a closed door meeting, Western governments led by the United States took Syria to task for failing to surrender its chemical weapons under ambitious deadlines agreed with Russia after a poison gas attack in August. Speaker after speaker stood up to berate Damascus at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), until it came to Russia's turn and Moscow took a much more lenient view - the international split over Syria writ large. Russia defended President Bashar al-Assad and said his government needed more time to ship the chemicals safely through territory where it is fighting rebels. Syria missed a first deadline to give up the most dangerous toxins on December 31 and another cut-off date passed on Wednesday, when it was due to hand over all the remaining critical chemical materials.More...