UNITED NATIONS, Sept 28 (AFP): The UN Security Council unanimously passed a landmark resolution Friday ordering the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons and condemning a murderous poison gas attack in Damascus.
The major powers overcame a prolonged deadlock to approve the first council resolution on the conflict, which is now 30 months old with more than 100,000 dead.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon, who called the resolution "the first hopeful news on Syria in a long time," said he hopes to convene a peace conference in mid-November.
Resolution 2118, the result of bruising negotiations between the United States and Russia, gives international binding force to a plan drawn up by the two to eliminate President Bashar al-Assad's chemical arms.
The plan calls for Syria's estimated 1,000 tonnes of chemical weapons to be put under international control by mid-2014.
International experts are expected to start work in Syria to meet the tight deadline next week. Britain and China offered to finance disarmament to the operation.
"Should the regime fail to act, there will be consequences," US Secretary of State John Kerry warned the 15-member council after the vote, sealing a US-Russian agreement.
But Kerry hailed the resolution.
"The Security Council has shown that when we put aside politics for the common good, we are still capable of doing big things," he said.
Human Rights Watch however what not impressed with the deal.
"This resolution fails to ensure justice for the gassing of hundreds of children and many other grave crimes," said the watchdog's UN director, Philippe Bolopion.
Efforts to destroy Syria's chemical weapons "do not address the reality that conventional weapons have killed the overwhelming majority of the estimated 100,000 people who have died in the conflict," Bolopion said.
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