UN Security Council tells Syria to speed up chemical weapons agent disposal

ABOVE: Will the June 30 deadline for destroying Syria’s chemical weapons be met?

The U.N. Security Council is calling on Syria to speed up the removal of the most harmful chemical agents from the country for destruction.

Under a timetable set up by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Syria was to have given up its entire stockpile of chemical weapons by Wednesday.

A council statement issued Thursday after a briefing by Sigrid Kaag, the head of the mission charged with destroying Syria’s chemical weapons, called on Syria “to expedite actions to meet its obligation to transport in a systematic and sufficiently accelerated manner all relevant chemicals to Latakia for removal from Syrian territory.”