Report: Assad May Still Have Chemical Weapons

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime may still possess chemical weapons despite promises to destroy them, according to a report on the website ForeignPolicy.com.

Quoting a confidential report, the website says U.S. and European inspectors have repeatedly found traces of nerve agents in Syrian labs and that the government's stories have changed several times.

In a summary of the report, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü says that most of the 122 samples from "multiple locations" inside Syria "indicate potentially undeclared chemical weapons-related activities."

The government's explanations for the findings "are not scientifically or technically plausible, and … the presence of several undeclared chemical warfare agents is still to be clarified," according to the report.

Assad agreed to halt use of chemical weapons against his own people in the country's ongoing civil war. Assad's regime killed more than 1,400 civilians with sarin gas in 2013 after President Barack Obama said that use of such weapons would represent a "red line" forcing the America to take action.

Obama did not launch airstrikes after the use of such weapons, and allowed the Russian government to settle the situation, and drawing critics from both sides of the political aisle in the United States.

But the new report indicates Syria held on to some of its chemical weapons and also found it has not given proper access to the top leaders of its chemical weapons program and has not accounted for 2,000 aerial bombs made to deliver mustard gas.

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