Official: State-DoD team preparing to contain shoulder-fired missiles in Syria

By Julie Ershadi - 08/08/12 03:53 PM ET

Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles might have caught the world's attention, but the Obama administration is also working behind the scenes to prevent more conventional shoulder-fired missiles from falling into the wrong hands, the State Department's liaison to the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Andrew Shapiro, the assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, said the State Department-led interagency task force charged with containing man-portable air-defense systems — or MANPADS — was ready for action in Syria after learning the lessons of Libya. Thousands of heat-seeking missiles are believed to have disappeared from Libyan armories during last year's civil war, creating a potential security risk for commercial airliners for decades to come and possibly contributing to the violence in Mali.

“As violence grows in Syria,” Shapiro said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “the MANPADS Task Force is building off its experience in Libya to plan and prepare for possible contingencies in Syria.”

The State Department-led task force was created in 2006 to help countries contain existing stockpiles and properly dispose of missiles no longer necessary for national defense. Shapiro said the task force was among “the types of interagency efforts necessary to effectively address transnational security threats,” including any that may arise from the conflict in Syria.

During the Libyan conflict, a “State Department MANPADS expert” was working on the ground in Benghazi while fighting had not yet subsided, Shapiro added. The department also deployed a “quick reaction force” to advise the Transitional National Council in preventing the proliferation of the weapons.