Syria has 8% of chemical material left

Syria still holds around eight percent of its chemical weaponsmaterial, missing a deadline to remove or destroy it all, the mission overseeing thedestruction of its arsenal said Sunday.Despite the slip, the head of the mission, Sigrid Kaag, said she was still hopeful aJune 30 deadline for the complete destruction of the chemical arms would be met.Parliament meanwhile announced that four new candidates had submittedapplications to run in Syria's June 3 presidential elections.On the ground, at least 21 people were killed when rebels carried out a mortarattack on regime-parts of the northern city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said.Kaag told reporters in Damascus that 7.5-8.0 percent of Syria's declared chemicalweapons material remained in-country, at "one particular site.""However, 92.5 percent of chemical weapons material removed or destroyed issignficant progress," she said."We also however need to... ensure the remaining 7.5-8.0 percent of the chemicalweapons material is also removed and destroyed."Under a US-Russian deal negotiated last year, Syria signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention and agreed to hand over its entire chemical arsenal by June 30of this year.Kaag acknowledged the security challenges facing the mission, but said Syria wasrequired to meet its commitments nonetheless"Success is around the corner and this last push is very much needed," she said."The 30 June deadline is around the corner... and we are hopeful that this is possibleand will be met."Meanwhile a lingering dispute remains over whether Syria will have to destroy 12remaining chemical weapons production sites.Damascus wants to seal the sites, which it says have already been renderedunusable, but Western countries want them completely destroyed, fearing that theymay be reopened in the future.There are also questions over alleged chlorine gas attacks in Syria in recent weeks,which the regime blames on a jihadist group but activists say were carried out bygovernment forces.Syria's government agreed to turn over its chemical arsenal last year as Washingtonthreatened military action after a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus thatreportedly killed some 1,400 people.Activists and much of the international community blamed the attack on the regime,which denied responsibility.- New presidential candidates -Parliament speaker Mohammad al-Lahham on Sunday said four more candidateswould stand in the June 3 presidential election, bringing to six those competingagainst President Bashar al-Assad.Assad, who has strongly suggested he will run, is widely expected to win the election although he has not yet announced his candidacy.The four candidates announced Sunday are Sawsan Haddad, Samir Maala,Mohammed Firas Rajjuh and Abdel-Salam Salameh.They join a businessman, Hassan Abdullah al-Nuri, and independent MP and formercommunist Maher al-Hajjar as candidates.The candidates are mostly unknowns, with few details immediately available abouttheir backgrounds or political leanings.In northern Aleppo meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said amortar attack by rebels on government-held parts of the northern city killed at least21 people.Rebels also blew up a building in a government-held part of the Old City there thathoused regime troops, the Britain-based monitoring group said.It also reported regime air raids with explosive-packed barrel bombs on severalopposition neighbourhoods in the east of the city, which killed at least six people. In the east of the country, Iraqi helicopters hit a jihadist convoy on Sunday killing atleast eight militants, said a spokesman for the interior ministry in Baghdad."The army struck eight tanker trucks in Wadi Suwab inside Syrian territory as theywere trying to enter Iraqi territory to provide the (jihadist) Islamic State of Iraq andthe Levant (ISIL) with fuel," Brigadier General Saad Maan said.He said the strike was not coordinated with Syria's government. The vehicles were travelling towards the western Iraqi border province of Anbar,where ISIL has been battling Iraqi security forces and where militants have seizedthe town of Fallujah.