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 The comments reflect a growing conviction among Western capitals
that President Bashar al-Assad has failed to come clean about
Syria's chemical weapons program despite his promises to end it, and
they insist the United States and its allies will resist calls by
Assad to shut down a special international chemical disarmament
mission set up to deal with Syria.
Syria denies it maintains the capacity to deploy chemical weapons,
calling the allegation a U.S. and European attempt to use their
"childish" policies to blackmail Assad's government.
But in a tacit acknowledgement of the original declaration's
incompleteness, Syria earlier this month submitted a more specific
list of its chemical weapons to the international disarmament
mission after discrepancies were reported by inspectors on the
ground, officials said.
Under threat of U.S. airstrikes, Assad agreed with the United States
and Russia in September to dispose of his chemical weapons — an
arsenal that Damascus had never previously formally acknowledged — after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in August
on the outskirts of the capital.
Washington and its Western allies said it was Assad's forces who
unleashed the sarin attack, the world's worst chemical attack in a
quarter-century. The government blamed the rebel side in Syria's
civil war, which is now in its fourth year.
The verification of Syria's declaration on its poison gas arsenal
and its destruction has been overseen by a joint team of the United
Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
(OPCW), the global chemical arms watchdog.
Diplomats say Western governments have long suspected Syria did not
declare all aspects of its chemical arms program. But the envoys say
they have kept silent on the issue to avoid giving Assad an excuse
to curtail cooperation with the U.N.-OPCW mission and slow down an
already delayed timetable for shipping toxins out of the country.
With more than 90 percent of Syria's declared chemical stockpiles
now out of the country, Western officials have started to break
their silence.
"We are convinced, and we have some intelligence showing, that they
have not declared everything," a senior Western diplomat told
Reuters, adding that the intelligence had come from Britain, France
and the United States.
When asked how much of its program Syria has kept hidden, the
diplomat said: "It's substantial." He offered no details.
AMBIGUITIES AND DISCREPANCIES
Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari dismissed the charge.
"These countries aren't really reliable and their policies towards
the implementation of the agreement between the Syrian government
and the OPCW aren't principled but rather childish," he said in a
mobile-phone text message to Reuters.
"If they have some evidence they must share it with the OPCW rather
than pretending to have secret evidence!"
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Ja'afari said the three Western powers' goal was to needlessly
extend the U.N.-OPCW mission by "keeping the 'chemical file' open
indefinitely so that they can keep exerting pressure and
blackmailing the Syrian government." Another Western official, who
also spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that while there
was not 100 percent certainty Syria maintains chemical weapons, the
three Western powers agreed that there is a "high level of
probability" that Syria deliberately under-reported the full extent
of its chemical arms-related stockpiles.
He cited examples of large batch of a sarin precursor chemical going
missing in Syria and Damascus' unverified claims to have destroyed
most of its mustard gas stocks before the U.N.-OPCW mission arrived
in the country and other anomalies.
In interviews over the last two months with Western officials with
access to intelligence about Syria, Reuters learned that topics of
concern include deadly nerve agent ricin, mustard gas, precursor
chemicals used to make sarin, and, more recently, the use of
chlorine gas in Syria.
U.S. and British officials have also spoken of ambiguities and
problems with the Syrian chemical weapons declaration. U.S.
officials warned as early as November that intelligence suggested
Syria may try to hide some toxins.
Suspicions that its declaration was incomplete deepened when Syria
did not report to the OPCW having sarin, which was used in the
outskirts of Damascus on August 21, or the type of rockets used to
deliver an estimated 300 liters of the toxin.
The senior Western diplomat said Britain, France and the United
States had provided information to the OPCW months ago, including on
specific undeclared chemical weapons sites. He added that the three
powers had also provided Assad's staunch ally Russia with the
intelligence but "they have not reacted."
The OPCW had no immediate comment when queried. A Russian U.N.
mission spokesman said he had no comment, though Moscow reiterated
on Friday its position that claims about the Syrian government using
chemicals weapons were false.
(Additional reporting by Anthony Deutsch in The Hague, Michelle
Nichols in New York, Mark Hosenball and Phil Stewart in Washington;
edited by Jason Szep and Lisa Shumaker)
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