THE HAGUE – Israeli airstrikes on Damascus are hampering Syria’s efforts to find and destroy chemical weapons stockpiled during the rule of toppled ruler Bashar al-Assad, a government adviser said on Thursday.

A planned visit by inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has already had to be postponed, adviser Ibrahim Olabi, who is the legal adviser to Syria’s Foreign Ministry tasked with the chemical weapons file, said.

The OPCW will hold an urgent meeting on Tuesday next week to discuss the situation in Syria, a document published on its website on Thursday showed. The meeting comes at the request of Qatar which represents the interest of Syria at the OPCW and which said in a letter the Israeli attacks on Damascus pose a direct threat to Syria’s capacity to meet its obligations to the chemical weapons watchdog.

Israel launched powerful airstrikes on Damascus on Wednesday, blowing up part of the defence ministry and hitting near the presidential palace, taking action it said was to protect the Druze minority in southern Syria.

The Syrian defence ministry provided the institutional infrastructure needed to organise and secure visits from OPCW inspectors, Olabi said.

Since March there have been several visits by inspectors to previously unseen production and storage locations for chemical weapons to prepare for the task of destroying remnants of Assad’s illegal stockpile. Syria’s interim-government has vowed to rid itself of chemical weapons.

The OPCW, a treaty-based agency in The Hague with 193 member countries, is tasked with implementing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.

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(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Sharon Singleton, Alexandra Hudson)