01:10Netherlands: OPCW director accepts Nobel Peace Prize
Netherlands: OPCW director accepts Nobel Peace Prize
The Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ahmet Uzumcu, held a press conference in the Bel Air Hotel in The Hague Friday, after it was announced that his organisation is the winner of the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. The director thanked the Nobel committee, while also highlighting the challenges that lie ahead in destroying Syria's chemical agent stock.
"The decision by the Nobel committee to bestow this year's Peace Prize on the OPCW is a great honour for our organisation," said Uzumcu. "We are a small organisation which for 16 years and away from the glare of international publicity has shouldered an onerous but noble task to act as the guardian of the global ban on chemical weapons that took effect in 1997."
He added: "There remains much work yet to be done. Our hearts go out to the Syrian people who were recently victims of the horror of chemical weapons. Today we are engaged in work which is meant to ensure that this atrocity is not repeated."
The Nobel committee said an August sarin gas attack in Damascus that killed hundreds 'underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons'. The OPCW mission in Syria began with a Russian diplomatic effort that proposed persuading Syria to give up its chemical weapons rather than face military intervention.
01:10Netherlands: OPCW director accepts Nobel Peace Prize
The Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ahmet Uzumcu, held a press conference in the Bel Air Hotel in The Hague Friday, after it was announced that his organisation is the winner of the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. The director thanked the Nobel committee, while also highlighting the challenges that lie ahead in destroying Syria's chemical agent stock.
"The decision by the Nobel committee to bestow this year's Peace Prize on the OPCW is a great honour for our organisation," said Uzumcu. "We are a small organisation which for 16 years and away from the glare of international publicity has shouldered an onerous but noble task to act as the guardian of the global ban on chemical weapons that took effect in 1997."
He added: "There remains much work yet to be done. Our hearts go out to the Syrian people who were recently victims of the horror of chemical weapons. Today we are engaged in work which is meant to ensure that this atrocity is not repeated."
The Nobel committee said an August sarin gas attack in Damascus that killed hundreds 'underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons'. The OPCW mission in Syria began with a Russian diplomatic effort that proposed persuading Syria to give up its chemical weapons rather than face military intervention.