Securing Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons as a first step toward destroying them would be neither a short nor an easy process, and it could require a halt to the fighting to allow inspections.
“These kind of disarmament agreements require a very intrusive inspection system; the natural assumption is Assad will cheat,” said Gary Samore, President Barack Obama’s former coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction. “I just don’t know how you can have that kind of inspection system in the middle of a civil war.”
