Syria Meets Deadline On Chemical Weapons; Fighting Continues

By Bill Chappell

Published September 21, 2013 at 8:40 AM CDT

A rebel fighter cleans his weapon in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Friday. Syria's civil war continues, even as the country follows a schedule of releasing information on its chemical weapons program.

Syria has delivered documents about its arsenal of chemical weapons, meeting a deadline set in the framework agreement between the U.S. and Russia that was announced Sept. 14. The deal calls for destroying all of the weapons by June of 2014. But the country's civil war is showing no sign of slowing down.

Saying that it was confirming Syria's "expected" disclosure, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons announced Saturday that its technical teams are "currently reviewing the information received."

There is no sign that Syria's civil war, which began more than two years ago, might end soon. There was more violence today.

"Rebels seized several villages south of Aleppo on Saturday," Reuters reports, "as part of their efforts to cut Syria's biggest city off from [President Bashar] Assad's forces and stop supplies and reinforcements from Damascus."

The U.S.-Russia framework to rid Syria of its chemical weapons has been posted online by the U.S. State Department. As we reported earlier this week, former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay says the plan includes "unrealistic" deadlines.