Italy on Thursday named the port of GioiaTauro in the Calabria region to receive Syrian chemical agents, including mustard gas, despite fierce opposition from local officials who slammed the move as undemocratic, according to ITAR TASS.
“The government has chosen the port of GioiaTauro as particularly appropriate,” Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi told lawmakers at a parliamentary hearing on the operation to take place by the beginning of February.
The operation to transfer some 500 tons of Syria’s deadliest chemicals from a Danish ship to a US vessel is part of a UN-backed plan to destroy the war-torn country’s chemical weapons arsenal by June 30.
Lupi said that an estimated 60 containers containing the chemicals, including mustard gas and the ingredients for the nerve agents sarin and VX, would be transferred from one ship to the other using cranes.
“There will be no stocking on land,” he said.
But the mayor of GioiaTauro, Renato Bellofiore, spoke out against the plan following press reports and just before the decision was officially announced.
R.S