The Nobel Peace Prize has turned the global spotlight back on the conflict in Syria.
The prize committee in Oslo, Norway, awarded it Friday to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international chemical weapons watchdog helping to eliminate the Syrian army's stockpiles of poison gas.
OPCW, a relatively small organization with a modest budget, dispatched experts to Syria after a sarin gas attack killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus in August.
Their deployment, supported by the United Nations, helped avert a U.S. strike against President Bashar Assad.
Nobel Peace Prize committee head Thorbjoern Jagland said the award was a reminder to nations such as the United States and Russia to eliminate their own large stockpiles, "especially because they are demanding that others do the same, like Syria."
"We now have the opportunity to get rid of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction. ... That would be a great event in history if we could achieve that," he said.
