DAMASCUS, Syria, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Unrest in Syria raised fears about the chemical stockpile and what could happen if controls over the weapons break down, a U.S. State Department official said.
A sudden collapse of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad may mean the integrity of controls over the country's weapons could be compromised, U.S. officials and weapons experts told The Washington Post in an article published Sunday.
Syria's favored chemical weapon is sarin, a nerve gas that is lethal if inhaled in the smallest of quantities and can be used to contaminate water and food supplies, officials said.
Most analysts doubt Assad would deliberately share chemical weapons with terrorists but they didn't discount the possibility that the weapons could vanish during the uprising,
"This is a scenario that's on the radar screen if things go downhill," a U.S. official who monitors events in Syria told the Post. "A lot of people are watching this closely."
Syria has refused to sign the U.N. Chemical Weapons convention and been developing a growing, and more deadly, stockpile, the Post said. The CIA determined Syria has a stockpile of sarin-based warheads and was working on developing VX, a deadlier nerve agent resistant to breaking down in the environment.
