Chemical weapons inspectors ready to enter Syria

An international team of chemists and epidemiologists is in Cyprus this week, poised to fly to Syria at the request of the country's president, Bashar Al-Assad, in the first investigation of an alleged use of chemical weapons since the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) came into force in 1997.

Last week a high-level CWC conference in the Dutch capital, The Hague, noted its "deep concern" at reports of chemical weapons use in Syria. Delegates can do little else until the team in Cyprus begins its investigations ? despite Assad's invitation, he has so far denied the team entry to Syria

A two-year-long uprising against Assad has led to 70,000 deaths and created 1.4 million refugees, but much foreign concern has centred on Assad's stockpiles of chemical weapons, which could wreak havoc in terrorists' hands.

Assad claims that rebels killed 25 people using chemical weapons near Aleppo in March. Although Syria has not signed the CWC, he asked UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon to investigate.

Rebels allege the Syrian military used chemical weapons near Homs and Damascus. French and British authorities have reportedly given Ban analyses of soil samples smuggled out of Syria that support this claim.

Chemical clues

Ban said in The Hague that all these claims should be investigated. This may have given Assad second thoughts about the allowing the inspectors in.

If they get in, what can they do? Assad's regime is thought to possess mustard gas and nerve agents such as sarin. These, or their chemical remains, can be detected in victims' tissues six weeks after exposure, says Alastair Hay of the University of Leeds, UK, and for months after that in chemical-bomb craters ? although that does not show who detonated them.

Jean-Pascal Zanders of the European Institute for Security Studies notes, however, that pictures of alleged victims of rebel attacks, and attack sites, do not suggest either chemical agent. For example, the victims' attendants are not wearing the protective clothing required after nerve gas; no one has the distinctive symptoms of mustard gas; attack sites have no tell-tale chlorine gas corrosion; and no phone photos of spent, hollow shells designed for chemical weapons have flashed round the internet.

To complicate matters further, there are reports that riot-control agents such as CS tear gas have been used in attacks by Syria's military, rather than "classic" chemical weapons. The CWC allows these for domestic law enforcement, not as weapons of war, but it is not clear on how to distinguish the two states of affairs.

Michael Crowley of the University of Bradford in the UK reported in The Hague that several countries, including Syria's arms suppliers, have tear gas weapons of a range and size "only useful for armed conflict".

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