No signs Syria is handing over remaining chemical weapons

AMSTERDAM: Syria has made no progress in relinquishing a last batch of chemical weapons it says is inaccessible due to fighting, making it increasingly likely it will miss a final deadline to destroy its toxic stockpile, Britain said on Thursday.
The British deputy representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) told delegates in The Hague that packaging material had arrived for the 100 metric tons of toxic chemicals.
“But there is still no sign of any movement of chemicals, nor any indications of a time scale for a move,” said the statement, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.
The agreement with Russia and the United States averted Western military strikes threatened in response to the worst chemical weapons atrocity in decades, which has been blamed by Washington on Assad’s government.
Assad government has missed several deadlines, most recently its own promise to hand over the remaining chemicals by April 27. It has also failed to destroy a dozen facilities that were part of the chemical weapons program.
Under the deal, Syria’s entire stockpile is supposed to have been destroyed by mid 2014, but “it is growing ever clearer that the 30 June deadline will not be met,” the British statement said. (Additional reporting by Dominic Evans in Beirut and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Meanwhile, Syrian troops reached a besieged prison Thursday in the northern city of Aleppo, ending a months-long attempt by rebels to free the inmates inside, a Syrian activist group and pro-government television stations reported.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Right, which has a network of activists around the country, said government forces entered the prison at dawn, ending a siege that began in April 2013. Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen and Al-Manar television stations, which are close to the Syrian government and have reporters in different parts of Syria, said government troops ended the siege.
The sprawling prison, which holds an estimated 4,000 inmates, has witnessed deadly clashes between government and opposition forces for the past year. Rebels repeatedly have barreled suicide car bombs into the front gates and fought guards and troops holed up inside.