UNITED NATIONS: The international chemical weapons watchdog has demanded more information from Syria about the recent destruction of two chlorine cylinders that were linked to the deadly 2018 attack on the Syrian city of Douma – by several members of the UN Security Council on Wednesday. A demand is echoed to the Council.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said that the Syrian government had sent a note to its secretariat on 9 July informing that two cylinders were destroyed by an air strike on a Syrian military facility on 8 June, including a former chemical weapons production. The facility was there.
Syrian state media reported on June 8 that Israeli planes had struck near the Syrian capital Damascus and in the central province of Homs. The goals were not disclosed.
The watchdog said that in November the cylinders were stored and inspected at another declared site about 60 kilometers (about 38 miles) from the site from where they were reportedly destroyed” and advised Syria. to open, transfer, or alter the containers or their contents in any way without the prior written consent of the Secretariat.
The agency said it was never informed that the cylinders were taken until they were reported destroyed. It asked Syria on 15 July to provide all relevant information regarding the movement of the two cylinders and any remnants of their destruction.
The watchdog report said that during November’s inspection of the cylinders, inspectors were ordered to take them to the organization’s headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, but Syrian authorities would not allow them to be shipped out of the country.
The report, which the UN disarmament chief presented to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, also requested further information and documentation about the damage to the production facility on 8 June.
Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, Barbara Woodward, told the council: The incident not only represents a highly worrying failure by Syria to comply with important OPCW requests, but with evidence central to an ongoing high-profile investigation. also represents unauthorized interference.
French Deputy Ambassador Nathalie Broadhurst described the unauthorized circulation and destruction of two chlorine cylinders as a matter of great concern.
Syrian Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh told the council that Israel’s attack on a previously declared chemical weapons production facility destroyed several chambers, fuel and two cylinders involved in the alleged Douma incident.
He criticized the OPCW report for failing to condemn the attack and focusing only on the technical aspects. He accused the OPCW of being politicized and becoming a weapon in the hands of some countries.
Sabbagh said Syria refused to allow the cylinders to be taken out of the country because they are part of a criminal investigation and there is legal, physical evidence regarding the alleged incident in which the terrorists used chemical weapons and whose Because he was murdered. innocent citizens.
The OPCW said in 2019 that its investigators found reasonable grounds that chlorine was used as a weapon in the attack on Douma on the outskirts of Damascus, which medical workers said killed more than 40 people and over 100 were injured.
At the time of the April 2018 attack, Douma was captured by rebels but surrounded by pro-government forces. The attack followed a week after the launch of missile attacks on Syrian government targets by the United States, Britain and France, which blamed President Bashar Assad’s government for the Douma incident.
Syria has denied carrying out the Dauma attack.
Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, whose country is a close ally of Syria, again accused the OPCW and its director of bias in adapting the facts to the conclusion of the Damascus crime. He claimed that there were obvious manipulations in the Douma report.
Polinski described it as strange that the OPCW report focused on moving the cylinders without any assessment of the airstrikes on Syria.
Even if the Syrian Party transferred them to its territory, which we understand Syria has every right to do, does that mean the airstrikes are justified, which is essentially a sovereign Is there an act of aggression against the state?, Polinsky asked.
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