UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu has urged the Syrian authorities for “full cooperation” with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
“Full cooperation by the Syrian Arab Republic with the Technical Secretariat is essential to close outstanding issues,” she said.
Nakamitsu told the Security Council that Syria “must declare all chemical weapons agents produced and/or weaponized at the former chemical weapons production facility, which was declared by the Syrian Arab Republic as never having been used to produce and/or weaponize chemical weapons.”
She noted that the Technical Secretariat still plans to conduct two inspections of sites in Syria — including the Syrian Science and Research Center — though those inspections remain subject to the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recalling that an attack on June 8 targeted a military facility housing a declared former chemical weapons facility, she added that two chlorine cylinders related to the incidents that took place in Douma in April 2018 were destroyed.
While OPCW has requested more information on the damage to the declared site, it noted that the cylinders were destroyed 60 kilometers away from the site where they were stored and inspected in November 2020.
The OPCW had previously warned Syrian authorities not to open, move or alter the contents of the cylinders in any way without the Organization’s prior consent, but the Technical Secretariat was not notified that they had been moved.
“What raises our particular indignation is that this report (just like the previous one) again deliberately shifts focus when covering the episode with an airstrike that targeted a declared chemical facility on the Syrian territory on 8 June 2021 and destroyed two cylinders that had been related to the Douma incident of April 2018.”
“The report still gives no assessment to the very fact of launching an airstrike against a sovereign state territory,” Deputy Permanent Representative Anna Evstigneeva said.
“It is time for the Assad regime to uphold its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Resolution 2118.”
“This Council decided, in the event of non-compliance with Resolution 2118, to impose measures under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter. We now have overwhelming evidence of numerous incidences of non-compliance by the Assad regime. Now is the time to uphold and enforce this Council’s decision,” said US Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Syria’s permanent representative to the United Nations Bassam Sabbagh said some Western States regrettably continue to derail meetings on the Syria chemical weapons file by politicizing them and turning them into a platform to levy false allegations.
“The paradox is that one such country, the United States, remains the only State party to the Chemical Weapons Convention that has yet to meet its obligations to destroy its own chemical weapons arsenal,” he added.
“False allegations to the contrary, which are without a shred of evidence, are only intended to mislead the international community,” Sabbagh continued.
