U.S. Ship Sent to Destroy Chemical Weapons Reaches Spain

The MV Cape Ray ar­rived in Spain on Thursday, but Pentagon of­fi­cials stressed that the U.S. ship won’t help des­troy Syr­ia’s chem­ic­al weapons un­til the coun­try has turned over its en­tire ar­sen­al.

“When Syr­ia has com­pleted re­mov­al of its chem­ic­al ma­ter­i­als, MV Cape Ray will de­part Rota and pro­ceed to the trans­load­ing port in Italy, where she will take the chem­ic­als on board,” said Col. Steve War­ren, a De­fense De­part­ment spokes­man. “Our ship is pre­pared and our crew is trained to safely neut­ral­ize Syr­ia’s chem­ic­al ma­ter­i­als.”

Syr­ia has been un­der in­creas­ing cri­ti­cism for miss­ing dead­lines un­der the Or­gan­iz­a­tion for the Pro­hib­i­tion of Chem­ic­al Weapons’ timeline to des­troy the coun­try’s chem­ic­al-weapons pro­gram. A third ship­ment of chem­ic­al ma­ter­i­als was taken out of the coun­try Monday.

Des­pite con­cerns raised by U.S. of­fi­cials, War­ren said the United States is “ready to ful­fill our con­tri­bu­tions to this in­ter­na­tion­al ef­fort; it is time for Syr­ia to live up to their ob­lig­a­tions to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­munity.”

Once Syr­ia turns over its chem­ic­al weapons, the Cape Ray will travel to Italy, where it will take the chem­ic­als and des­troy them at sea, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the U.S. Em­bassy in Mad­rid. The United States has also giv­en mil­lions of dol­lars in as­sist­ance to help sup­port the OP­CW’s ef­forts.