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Saturday, 12 October 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Nobel Peace Prize committee head Thorbjoern Jagland said the award was a reminder to nations such as the United States and Russia to eliminate their own large stockpiles, “especially because they are demanding that others do the same, like Syria”.
“We now have the opportunity to get rid of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction...That would be a great event in history if we could achieve that,” he said.
The OPCW’s mission was unprecedented in taking place during a civil war that has riven the country and killed more than 100,000 people. Members of the Hague-based OPCW team themselves came under sniper fire on August 26. While the inspection and destruction of chemical weapons continues, with a team of 27 in the field, Assad forces and rebels clash across the country using conventional weapons.
Human Rights Watch said this week rebels had killed at least 190 civilians in Latakia province in August.
On Friday, government forces were trying to regain control of the area around the town of Safira, about 20km southeast of Aleppo. The town, controlled by rebels including the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, is right next to a major suspected chemical weapons site.
Friday’s award marks a return to the disarmament roots of the prize after some recent awards including the European Union last year and U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009.
Those awards led to criticism that the committee was out of line with the spirit of the prize, founded by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
His 1895 will says the prize should go to one of three causes - “fraternity between nations”, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.
The process of destroying chemical weapons can be hazardous and is costly. The chemicals can be burnt, but with care not to disperse poisonous toxins, or chemically neutralised. U.N. head Ban Ki-moon said this week the chemicals would be ‘dangerous to handle, dangerous to transport and dangerous to destroy”.
“Chemical weapons are horrible things and they must never be used and that contributes not just to disarmament, but to strengthening the humanity within us,” Malik Ellahi, political adviser to the OPCW director general, told Reuters.
“It has always been our position, that quintessentially we work for peace. Not just for peace, we work to strengthen humanitarian norms.”
The Hague-based OPCW was set up in 1997 to implement a 1992 global Chemical Weapons Convention to banish chemical arms and most recently helped destroy stockpiles in Iraq and Libya. It has about 500 staff and an annual budget under $100 million.
The United States and Russia had committed to destroying their arsenals by 2012 but have as yet failed to do so.
