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Syria inspectors win Nobel peace prize

OPCW enforces crucial chemical weapons convention

Norway's Nobel peace prize committee awarded this year's gong to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The OPCW was formed in 1997 to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention, the first international treaty to outlaw an entire class of weapons.

"The convention and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as taboo under international law," the Nobel committee said.

"Recent events in Syria ... have underlined the need to enhance efforts to do away with such weapons."

The award comes just days before Syria officially joins as the group's 190th member.

OPCW director-general Ahmet Uzumcu said the prize was recognition of the group's work for global peace in the past 16 years.

"But it's also an acknowledgement of our staff's efforts, who are now deployed in Syria, who have been making a brave effort there to fulfil their mandate," he said.

In the past, seven nations - Albania, India, Iraq, Libya, Russia and the US, along with a country not identified by the OPCW but widely believed to be South Korea - have declared stockpiles of chemical weapons and have destroyed or are in the process of destroying them.

However, the committee noted that some countries have not observed the April 2012 deadline for destroying them.

"This applies especially to the US and Russia," committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland noted.

According to the OPCW, 57,740 tons, or 81.1 per cent, of the world's declared stockpile of chemical agents have been verifiably destroyed.

An OPCW report earlier this year said the US had destroyed about 90 per cent of its stockpile, Russia had destroyed 70 per cent and Libya 51 per cent.

Syrian MP Fayez Sayegh, a member of the ruling Ba'ath party, said the organisation should work to rid the entire Middle East - including Israel - of weapons of mass destruction.

He said he hoped the OPCW "wins more Nobel prizes for peace" in the future.

Rebel spokesmen were more grudging, saying that the focus on chemical weapons obscured the fact that tens of thousands of Syrian were falling victim to more conventional arms.

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