Foreign and Expatriates Minister Fayssal Mekdad stressed that some countries are attempting to exploit the forum of the Conference on Disarmament to settle their scores with the countries which do not share their hostile stances and policies. He pointed out that those countries haven’t been content with the impending return of the conference, and have worked on undermining the credibility and role of the mechanisms.
Mekdad said, in his speech via video before the high-level segment of the conference, that the politicization of the work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has caused it to distance itself from its tasks defined by the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which constituted a threat to its credibility and future.
He indicated that the US-western pressures on the technical secretariat aim to transform the organization into a tool to target member states to serve the geopolitical interests of the US, the only party in the convention which continues to possess chemical weapons since World War II.
Mekdad indicated that Syria attaches great importance to the conference since it is the only multilateral negotiating forum concerned with disarmament. He expressed Syria’s commitment to cooperate with the efforts that respect professionalism, neutrality and impartiality, and the provision of procedural rules.
Mekdad stressed the need to preserve the conference role, nature, and mandate.
Mekdad affirmed Syria’s support for negotiation in the conference as a binding, unconditioned, and irrevocable international legal instrument that provides effective guarantees against the use of nuclear weapons or the threat to use them.
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.
