OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü, visited the Vatican on 27 September and had an audience with Pope Francis.
Pope Francis and OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü.
The Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, visited the Vatican today and had an audience with Pope Francis.
The Director-General provided the Holy Father a briefing on the work of the OPCW, especially the critical tasks that have been assigned to the organisation in Syria to verify the elimination of its chemical weapons and related capabilities.
The Holy Father expressed his full support for the OPCW’s important work and underlined its humanitarian imperatives. He stressed that the international community must stand united in its abhorrence of chemical weapons.
It was agreed that chemical weapons have no place in the world, and that the international community must continue its efforts to eliminate them and ensure they never re-emerge. It was also emphasized that a crucial step in these efforts is to achieve the universality of the Chemical Weapons Convention, and that chemistry must only be used for peaceful purposes in the service of humanity.