Some western governments refuse to acknowledge that Syria has fulfilled all its commitments pursuant to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and has destroyed its entire chemical stockpile since 2014, Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari said in a statement during a Security Council session on Tuesday.
He added that these countries continue to adopt hostile stances against Syria and cover up the crimes of terrorists, particularly their use of chemical weapon against civilians in the country.
“Syria has repeatedly stressed that it didn’t and won’t use chemical weapons and that it is committed to continuous cooperation with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and its Technical Secretariat in order to completely close this file as soon as possible,” stressed Jaafari.
He made it clear that on Sept. 16, 2020, Syria submitted to the OPCW’s Technical Secretariat its 82nd monthly report on activities related to the destruction of chemical weapons and their production facilities, noting that the tripartite cooperation agreement between Syria, the UN and the OPCW was extended for six months starting from Sept. 30, 2020. He pointed out that during the period between Sept. 28 and Oct. 1, 2020, the 23rd round of consultations was held between the Syrian government and an OPCW team, which visited Damascus and implemented its program with the full assistance of Syria.
“However, Syria’s cooperation was met by a continuous escalation by Western countries. These countries promoted illegal mechanisms such as the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) that was created in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The US administration also submitted a draft resolution to the Security Council that aimed at marketing and imposing lies,” Jaafari went on to say.
He stressed that this behavior confirms that some Western countries’ sought to use the Security Council in order to serve their expansionist and aggressive agendas and this reveals the double standards policy adopted by the US administration in dealing with the chemical weapons issue, particularly because it is the only CWC member country that is still possessing huge stockpiles of chemical weapons, held since WWII, and refuses to destroy them.
Jaafari indicated that representatives of some Western governments ignore the facts in order to cover up the crimes of terrorist organizations in Syria and their use of chemical weapons and toxic gases against civilians and they refuse to acknowledge the fact that Syria has fulfilled all its obligations and destroyed all its chemical stockpile, a fact that was confirmed by head of the Joint Mission to Eliminate Chemical Weapons in Syria Sigrid Kaag, in her final report submitted to the Security Council in June 2014.
The senior Syrian diplomat regretted the fact that the OPCW has lost it credibility and professionalism when it was turned by some western states into a tool to target certain countries including Syria.
He renewed Syria’s call on the OPCW member states to speak up against the politicization of the organization’s mission and to seek ways to fix the defects in its work that undermine the organization’s credibility. He also renewed Syria’s call on the OPCW’s Director-General to address violations and fix the defects, instead of bending to Western pressure and implementing the agendas of some governments that wish to keep the so-called “chemical file” as a pressure card against Syria and its allies.
He hailed an initiative by Russia and China for holding an informal meeting of the Security Council on Sept. 28, 2020, in accordance with the Arria Formula (The Arria Formula is an informal arrangement that allows the Security Council greater flexibility to be briefed about international peace and security issues) concerning the chemical file in Syria. He noted that the meeting was an important opportunity to hear the testimonies of experts in this field, including Ian Henderson, a former OPCW inspector and Professor Theodore Postol from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US as well as journalist Aaron Maté from The Gray Zone website, who revealed two weeks ago the involvement of the British intelligence in funding and supporting an anti-Syria propaganda.
This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
