ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Western nations have accused Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime of refusing to answer questions posed by the Chemical Weapons Convention at a UN Security Council meeting in New York on Wednesday, as they continue to seek answers regarding the country’s research, production, and potential weaponisation of chemical attacks, which data estimates has killed almost 2,000 people in Syria since 2012.
Representatives from member states committed to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), formed in order to oversee compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which prohibits the development, possession and use of chemical weapons, have voiced their dissatisfaction with the regime’s obscuration in recent years.
Speaking to the council on Wednesday, the UN’s disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu reported that 20 of the 24 outstanding issues into the regime opened by the OPCW in 2014 remain unresolved and, due to persisting gaps, inconsistencies and discrepancies, Syria’s declaration of its chemical weapons programme still cannot be considered accurate and complete in accordance with the CWC.
Nakamitsu called on Syria to respond to the organisation’s requests “as soon as possible” and to allow all members of its team “unfettered access,” giving the example of the government’s refusal to grant a visa to one member and urging the country to cooperate with the OPCW.
The US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the meeting that the world “should not be fooled by Syria’s veneer of cooperation” while it deliberately delays answers to the international chemical weapons watchdog, as reported by AP.
France’s UN ambassador Nicolas De Riviere went further, telling those present that Syria is not only not cooperating with the OPCW, but it has continued to use chemical weapons. “The facts must be qualified as crimes against humanity,” he said.
Damascus’ representative Bassam Sabbagh rebuffed the claims, telling the council that the Syrian government was cooperating with the terms of the investigation and denied blocking a visit.
Syria’s UN ambassador told the council that his government “rejects any attempt to question the Syrian declaration and serious cooperation with the OPCW and its technical secretariat.”
The Assad regime continues to deny its use of chemical weapons, citing “falsifying truths” and insisting that it handed over its weapons stockpiles under a 2013 agreement with the US and Russia, which was prompted by a suspected gas attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta that killed 1,400 people.
In November, representatives committed to the OPCW criticised the Syrian regime’s lack of openness into its use of the deadly tool at the twenty-sixth session of the annual Conference of the States Parties (CSP) in The Hague.
Data published by the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) and Syrian Archive last November found that the largest fatalities occurred in Syria’s Sarin in 2013, which left almost 10,000 with injuries. Of the 349 cases of chemical weapon attacks, the Berlin based-think tank attributes 334 to the Syrian government. Eight were claimed by Islamic State (ISIS), with the remaining 7 unidentified.
Last month, a French-Syrian man was detained by French police on suspicion of supplying components for the manufacture of chemical weapons in Syria through his shipping company.
As the eleventh anniversary of the Syrian conflict nears, figures published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) last month reported that 3,746 people were killed in Syria in 2021, including 1,505 civilians and 360 children; the lowest annual toll yet in the conflict that has seen the death of over half a million people, mostly at the hands of the Assad regime and allied militias.
