Syria's chemical weapons that should be destroyed outside the country could be removed by April 13, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said on Friday, adding there was no need to adjust the timeframe.
"If there are no difficulties then in a month, on April 13, the removal will be practically finished," Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the Foreign Ministry's security and disarmament department, was quoted as saying by RIA news agency.
Ulyanov added that Syria would present the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons with a new plan to destroy its chemical weapons production facilities at the end of March.
Syria declared 12 production facilities to the OPCW and had until March 15 to destroy them under a deal agreed with the United States and Russia. Damascus has already missed several deadlines laid out in the agreement.
Damascus agreed last year to destroy all chemical weapons facilities and surrender 1,300 metric tonnes of toxic agents to a joint OPCW/United Nations mission. It has until June 30 to eliminate its chemical weapons program completely.
UNICEF:
Syria's government has promised greater access for aid groups supporting millions of Syrians, but faster progress is needed to tackle a dire humanitarian crisis, the head of the United Nations children's agency said on Friday.
UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake, speaking at a refugee camp for Syrians in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, said he was encouraged by "business-like" talks he held this week with Syrian officials in Damascus and Homs.
"They said yes, they would be offering more access, allowing us to bring in more different kinds of supplies," Lake said, adding that it had already become easier to move food and medicine across frontlines separating President Bashar al-Assad's forces from rebel fighters.
"We have to translate that now into continuing and much more rapid progress because the progress is not equal to the scope of the tragedy," he told Reuters.
In a rare display of unity over Syria, the U.N. Security Council last month called unanimously for greater aid access in Syria, including a demand for cross-border access which Damascus has resisted because it has lost control of some border regions.
Lake gave no details, but aid workers said Syria had offered to let relief goods pass through Turkey's Nusaybin crossing into northeastern Syria, a Kurdish region which has assumed a degree of autonomy but where Assad's security forces are still present.
Perhaps intentionally, the proposal is likely to unsettle Turkey, which would be nervous about opening the border into an area of Syria largely controlled by fighters linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey.
The aid workers said United Nations officials based in Turkey were seeking access through at least two other crossings, including the Bab al-Hawa frontier which could open up the rebel-held provinces of Idlib and Aleppo to international aid.
As Syria's devastating conflict enters its fourth year, more than 2.5 million Syrians are living as refugees in neighbouring countries and another 6.5 million are displaced internally.
The number of people displaced now exceeds 40 percent of Syria's pre-war population, the highest total in the world, the head of the refugee agency UNHCR said.
On the field:
On another note, fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) withdrew on Friday from Idlib and Latakia provinces towards Raqqa and Aleppo provinces, according to the Syrian observatory for the Human rights.
This as the observatory added that the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front has received the bases which the ISIL cleared, noting that the armed group is no longer able to protect its fighters in these regions."
REUTERS/LBCI