Israel believes Syria kept 'significant' chemical munitions

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel believes Syria has retained caches of combat-ready chemical weapons after giving up raw materials used to produce such munitions under pressure from foreign powers, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday.

Summarising Israeli intelligence estimates that were previously not disclosed to avoid undermining the Syrians' surrender of their declared chemical arsenal, the official said they had kept some missile warheads, air-dropped bombs and rocket-propelled grenades primed with toxins like sarin.

"There is, to my mind, still in the hands of Syria a significant residual capability... that could be used in certain circumstances and could be potentially very serious," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

While saying Israel had a "high degree of confidence" in its information, he declined to give figures for chemical weapons allegedly kept by Syria, citing secrecy concerns as well as the possibility some had been destroyed or used by President Bashar Assad's forces.

"What we are saying is that there are a number of questions here that still have to be clarified, still have to be looked at very closely" by international inspectors, the official said.

Israel's intelligence service was the first to accuse Assad's regime of using chemical weapons against areas held by Syrian rebels in the ongoing civil war.

Western powers soon echoed the charge and Washington threatened Damascus with air strikes.

Assad agreed to give up the chemical arsenal, which Damascus had previously not acknowledged having. However, he denied his forces had used them and accused rebels of such attacks.

International diplomats told Reuters this week that Syria had revealed a previously undeclared research and development facility, and a laboratory to produce the ricin poison.

Those disclosures appeared to support Western assertions in recent months that the Assad regime had not been fully transparent in detailing its chemical weapons programme.

The Israeli official said the 1,300 tonnes of mustard gas and precursors for sarin and VX surrendered by Syria largely matched Israeli assessments of its total stockpile of such materials. The shelf-life of any deployable munitions held back was limited given the chemicals' deterioration, he added.

When asked about the possibility that Islamic State insurgents in Syria and Iraq might get hold of Assad's remaining chemical weapons, the official said Israel had no indication that this had happened, indicating that Israeli intelligence knew where Assad's remaining chemical arms were kept and that these sites were still safe — something he declined to confirm or deny directly.