Chemical weapons agency chief to meet Syrian officials in Damascus on Saturday, sources say

The head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a global non-proliferation agency, will meet Syrian officials in Damascus on Saturday, three sources familiar with the visit told Reuters.

Director General Fernando Arias was expected to meet interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, two of the sources said, in a sign of Syrian willingness to cooperate with the agency after years of strained relations under now-toppled leader Bashar al-Assad.

The sudden fall of the Assad government in December brought hope that the country could be rid of chemical weapons.

Following a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of people in 2013, Syria joined the OPCW under a U.S.-Russian deal and 1,300 metric tons of chemical weapons and precursors were destroyed by the international community.

As part of membership, Damascus was supposed to be subjected to inspections. But for more than a decade the OPCW was prevented from uncovering the true scale of the chemical weapons program. Syria's declared stockpile has never accurately reflected the situation on the ground, inspectors concluded.

When asked about contacts with the OPCW over chemical weapons still in Syria, the country's new defense minister Murhaf Abu Qasra told Reuters in January that he "does not believe" that any remnants of Syria's chemical weapons programme remained intact.

"Even if there was anything left, it's been bombed by the Israeli military," Abu Qasra said, referring to a wave of Israeli strikes across Syria in the wake of Assad's fall.

Details of the mission to Syria are still being worked out but its key aims will be finding and securing chemical stocks to prevent proliferation risk, identifying those responsible for their use and overseeing the destruction of remaining munitions.

The OPCW has asked the authorities in Syria to secure all relevant locations and safeguard any relevant documentation.

Three investigations - a joint U.N.-OPCW mechanism, the OPCW's Investigation and Identification team, and a U.N. war crimes investigation - concluded that Syrian government forces used the nerve agent sarin and chlorine barrel bombs in attacks during the civil war that killed or injured thousands.

A French court issued an arrest warrant for Assad which was upheld on appeal over the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians. Syria and its military backer Russia always denied using chemical weapons. 

The OPCW, a treaty-based agency in The Hague with 193 member countries, is tasked with implementing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. Egypt, North Korea, and South Sudan have neither signed nor acceded to the convention and Israel has signed but not ratified it.