ADVERTISEMENTSyria’s decision to start sending data to the international watchdog on chemical weapons comes just a few days after it joined the organisation.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague has given Damascus until Saturday to hand over a full list of its chemical stockpile.
Weapons experts say Syria has several thousand tonnes of lethal nerve agents, spread across 50 sites.
It will take several months for inspectors to verify the accuracy of the information that the Syrian government provides.
Syria itself does not have the means of destroying its own chemical weapons.
Only Russia and the United States have the capacity to handle the deadly mustard, Sarin and cyanide-armed munitions.
But neither Washington nor Moscow will destroy the weapons on their own soil, with the most likely option being that new facilities would be built on Syrian territory under the supervision of the United Nations.
Yet as the two and a half year civil war drags on, that’s a process that won’t even begin for many months, maybe even years.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, however, claims that it could be completed within one year.
Just last month, the Syrian leader denied even having chemical weapons in a US TV interview.
Euronews’ Efi Koutsokosta met with the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at the body’s HQ in the Hague.