UN Security Council may vote on Syria chemical weapons Sept 27

PanARMENIAN.Net - The UN Security Council could vote as early as late Friday, September 27 on a draft resolution to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said, according to RIA Novosti.

The Russian diplomat said the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) must first approve its roadmap for the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons because it will be included in the UN resolution.

The Hague-based body will be in charge of securing and destroying the Syrian stockpiles of chemical weapons in line with the U.S.-Russian plan, which was hammered out between the two sides in Geneva earlier this month.

“We are hoping that, according to the procedure, the OPCW executive council will be able to make the decision within 24 hours,” Churkin told reporters after a brief meeting of the Security Council to discuss the draft of the UN resolution on Syria late on Thursday.

“If it happens in The Hague tomorrow night, that is, when it is 3 or 4 p.m. here in New York, we will be able to vote [on the UN resolution] at 8 p.m.," Churkin said.

Russia and the United States announced on Thursday that they have agreed on a draft UN Security Council resolution that will not allow military action to enforce Syria’s compliance with a U.S.-Russian plan to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons.

The document was submitted to other Security Council members for discussion, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in New York.

In an interview on the Fox News television channel earlier this month, Syrian President Bashar Assad said his government would dispose of its chemical weapons arsenal and it would take about a year. "I think it is a very complicated operation technically and it needs a lot, a lot of money. Some estimated about a billion for the Syrian stockpile," he said.