WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Washington and Moscow should continue to address the issue of chemical weapons in Syria and their potential use by the government forces, senior US State Department official stated on Wednesday following the meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“They [Kerry, Lavrov] also covered the situation in Syria, to include the importance of finding a political solution and the need to continue to address the Assad regime's possession and potential use of chemical weapons,” the official stated.
Assistant Secretary of the Bureau for International Security and Nonproliferation Thomas Countryman told Sputnik in July that the US government was hopeful of future cooperation with Russia to end the ongoing use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict.
Russia and the United States reached an agreement in 2013 to work together to secure and destroy the vast majority of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. The deal was struck as Washington was threatening military action against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Syria joined the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and agreed to destroy its chemical arms stockpile after a 2013 sarin gas attack near Damascus killed more than 1,000 people.
At the end of October 2014, the OPCW reported that nearly 98 percent of chemical weapons removed from Syria had been destroyed.
In March 2015, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning the use of chlorine gas during the conflict in Syria.
