Saudi Newspaper: Assad to sell chemical materials to Houthis in Yemen

A senior army officer and chemical-weapons specialist who defected from Bashar al-Assad’s forces said that Regime's army officials have made a deal with Houthis in Yemen to sell tons of toxic chemical substances for $ 1 billion, according to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan.

Brigadier General Zaher Saket doubted the UN-endorsed decommissioning plan would be effective in removing all of the chemical weapons from Assad’s forces and his allies, especially the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“Some of the chemical weapons shipments are already with Hezbollah,” he said, according to agencies.

Foreign policy reported exclusively two days ago, that Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has asked international inspectors to spare a dozen of its chemical weapons factories from the wrecking ball, The Cable has learned. The Syrians say they want to convert the plants into civilian chemical facilities. But the move is fueling concern among some non-proliferation experts that Damascus may be seeking to maintain the industrial capacity to reconstitute its chemical weapons program at some later date.

The Syrian request -- which was contained in a confidential letter from Muallem to Ahmet Üzümcü, the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons -- has also raised concern among some Western governments that Syria may seek to entangle the inspection agency in lengthy negotiations that could drag out the process of destroying Syria's chemical weapons.