Syria chemical arms team to disband Sept. 30, probe to go on: UN

A joint mission of the United Nations and the global anti-chemical arms watchdog that has overseen the destruction of Syria's toxic gas stocks will shut down on Sept. 30 though a successor unit will continue investigating, the U.N. chief said.

Last week the Pentagon said a specially equipped U.S. ship had finished neutralizing all 600 metric tons of the most dangerous of Syria's chemical weapons components surrendered to the international community this year to avert threatened air strikes.

With the bulk of the elimination work completed, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote to the president of the Security Council, British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, that a joint mission of the U.N. and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) would shut down next month.

"With the completion of the destruction of all declared priority chemical weapons materials, and following consultations with the Director-General of the OPCW, we will bring the Joint Mission to a close on 30 September 2014," Ban wrote in the letter, obtained by Reuters on Aug. 27.

"Successor arrangements will be in place at that time to ensure a seamless transition," Ban added. He did not elaborate as details of the arrangements were still being worked out.

In a monthly report on Syria attached to Ban's letter, the OPCW said that its own fact-finding team was "continuing its work to establish the facts surrounding the allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic."

A U.N. commission of inquiry on Wednesday accused the Syrian government of dropping barrel bombs on civilian areas, a war crime under international law. The bombs included some believed to contain the poison...