In Aftermath Of Navalny Poisoning, Chemical-Weapons Group Tiptoes Toward Unprecedented Step rferl.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from rferl.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
there s never actually been a challenge inspection in the whole history of enforcing this thing on chemical weapons, but there could be one here. we re on new ground here. can the goal in syria be reached? and the obama administration has been saying for the last three weeks, since that alleged gas attack outside damascus, that its main goal, its immediate goal, is to stop any further use of chemical weapons in syria. regardless of the long-term challenges here, is that short-term goal of stopping syria from using chemical weapons, is that short-term goal already achieved? based in part on what happened today? joining us now is ben rhodes. he s a deputy national security adviser for president obama. mr. rhodes, thank you very much for being here tonight. it s nice to have you here. good to be with you, rachel. so a lot of the focus right now, a lot of the commentary on what s happening in this diplomatic push is how hard it s going to be to make sure that syria does this, that they
carried about 1500 inspections of their life and those involve most little inspections of on going destruction programs, not search and find. in fact, they ve never done either a challenge inspection or and ispection in which you had to find suspected is weapons that the state did not disclose. so that s a different group of people. i think they re very well trained. in the u.s. case, for example, at that figure, that s counting really military personnel mostly who have been specially trained in aspects of this. whether they re available or not, i have no idea what the politics will say. right. in regard to the chinese and russian numbers, will guesses because neither have disclosed what they have. when you hear the syrians asking for technical assistance and the notion they would have to provide the heavy lifting, it makes you worry, they call the
this disclosure process, they re going to have to tell the opcw, this watchdog agency, where these weapons are and the inspectors from the agency are going to have to monitor those weapons. but it s an issue of verification that syria really is telling the truth. and so this agency will be receiving reports. there are all sorts of intelligence reports that the u.s. and other countries are getting. they ll pass them on to the inspectors. if syria may have a cache of chemical weapons that they re not telling anyone about, the opcw has the ability to go in there and do a challenge inspection, but it s a very tricky issue and that s going to be one of the big challenges going forward. a lot to talk about. alan boyle, thanks so much. i want to recommend to everybody that they be sure to read alan s entire article. you can find it at nbcnews.com. alan, thanks again, sir. appreciate it. coming up next, this week s friday feature, our go and do. a young man with a love for
inspected. trained chemical weapons inspectors, who have done this in all the countries that have gotten rid of their chemical weapons, trained inspectors will go to the declared sites and essentially do an audit. they compare what they find at those sites to what has been declared. and then this is the really interesting part. other countries who are members of this convention can then consult their own intelligence about what they think syria s got, and they can pipe up if they think there are other sites that ought to be inspected that syria has left off its list. signing a convention, signing an international compact like this is cunning essentially telling each other, we are all in this together. and part of what you are agreeing to when you agree to sign on to that is that the other countries who are signed on to this convention with you, they can ask for challenge inspections, if they think you ve got chemical weapons at some site that you haven t owned up to. they can say, i wa