Syria handed over the remaining 100 tonnes of toxic material it had reported to the global chemical weapons watchdog, but Western governments said it was too early to declare the country free of weapons of mass destruction, according to The Associated Press.
The delayed final consignment, roughly 8 percent of a total 1,300 tonnes Syria declared to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapon, had been held at a storage site which the government of President Bashar al-Assad said it had been unable to access due to fighting with rebels, the AP reported.
The security situation in the area has now improved and the containers of chemicals were taken by truck to the Syrian port of Latakia and loaded onto a ship to be destroyed at sea on a specially equipped U.S. vessel, said OPCW Chief Ahmet Uzumcu, according to the AP.
"A major landmark in this mission has been reached today. The last of the remaining chemicals identified for removal from Syria were loaded this afternoon aboard the Danish ship Ark Futura," Uzumcu told a news conference in The Hague, the AP reported.
Syria agreed last September to destroy its entire chemical weapons programme under a deal negotiated with the United States and Russia after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, according to the AP.
The agreement averted U.S. military strikes in response to the worst chemical weapons attack in decades, which Washington and its European allies blamed on Assad's regime, the AP reported.
Assad blamed rebels battling to oust him for the chemical attack, according to the AP. Western governments reacted cautiously to Monday's announcement and said they remained concerned about Syria's chemical weapons capability, partly because of use of chlorine-like chemicals on the battlefield.
"There are still some serious issues that need to be addressed and we are not going to stop until those have been addressed," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said during a visit to Baghdad, the AP reported. "We remain deeply concerned about reports of systematic use of chlorine gas in opposition areas."
