Syria’s Chemical Weapons Program: US Persists Despite Russian and Chinese Resistance

The United States and its allies vowed on Tuesday to keep Syria’s unwillingness to account for its chemical weapons program front and center before the U.N. Security Council each month, despite concerns from Russia and China.

The Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, according to U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has repeatedly lied to the international community and to investigators from the international chemical weapons watchdog, who have confirmed that the government has used these prohibited weapons on at least nine occasions.

She asserted that the Biden administration will keep up its demands for Syria to provide a full accounting, as it promised when it ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in September 2013 under pressure from its close ally Russia in the wake of a deadly chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus that the West blamed on Damascus.

Russia and China first declined to speak at the monthly meeting on the Syrian chemical weapons issue, citing their repetition and the need for speaking time reduction.

Alhakan Dandy, the minister counselor for Syria, did speak, expressing his country’s surprise at the meeting this month given the lack of developments that would have called for it, aside from what he called the United States’ ongoing attempts to use the chemical weapons issue to further their hostile agenda against Syria.

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Chemical Weapons Controversy

He reaffirmed Syria’s opposition to the use of chemical weapons and denounced as “lies” any reports that such weapons were used in Ghouta, where more than 1,400 people perished. However, he claimed that chemical weapons are not in the Syrian military’s arsenal.

Dandy claimed that Syria had collaborated with the organization that oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention’s implementation, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. 

Yet he also charged that the investigation’s investigators were politicized, engaged in dishonest working practices, and applied double standards.

In a meeting with Syrian representatives that took place in Beirut on June 22 and 23, a delegation from the OPCW’s technical secretariat was informed by Ebo that Syria had agreed to make ideas for bettering the fulfillment of its commitments.

He stated that the OPCW is awaiting word from Damascus regarding the continuation of negotiations.

Thomas-Greenfield expressed sadness about the silence of two permanent council members—she did not name them. China and Russia were the only nations to keep quiet.

Although the United Arab Emirates, the council’s Arab representative, argued that the topic of Syria’s chemical weapons should be discussed every three months rather than every month, there was broad consensus from other council members that Syria must respond to all inquiries from the OPCW.

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Source: MSN