Damascus to comply with UN on arms plan: Syrian minister

LONDON - Agence France-Presse

A report by U.N. chemical weapons experts will likely confirm that poison gas was used in an August 21 attack on Damascus suburbs that killed hundreds of people, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sept. 13. REUTERS photo

Damascus will commit to a U.S.-Russian plan to eradicate its chemical weapons once it has United Nations approval, Syria's information minister told British television Sept. 15, adding that the regime had already begun preparing relevant documents.

"Syria is committing itself to whatever comes from the U.N.," Omran al-Zoubi told ITN. "We accept the Russian plan to get rid of our chemical weapons. In fact we've started preparing our list.

"We are already documenting our papers and we have started to do our job," he added. "We don't waste time." His comments come a day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov announced an ambitious deal to dismantle and destroy Syria's chemical arms stockpile by mid-2014.

Syria will implement the U.S.-Russian deal when it "turns into something more concrete" following a U.N. Security Council vote, al-Zoubi said.

"For 40 years Syria has always been trusted once it has committed itself." al-Zoubi vowed that war-torn Syria would "absolutely" grant access to weapons inspectors, saying the country "respects and honours what it says." "We take this agreement very seriously," the minister said.