Moscow: UN chemical weapons experts to return to Syria Wednesday
UN chemical weapons inspectors are to return to Syria on Wednesday to continue their mission, says Russia. But Moscow is unhappy with the direction the US is steering the Russian-brokered plan to dismantle the Syrian stockpile of chemical weapons.
The experts were sent to investigate several cases of alleged use of chemical weapons, but their work was disrupted by the August 21 attack, which killed an estimated 1,400 people. The team was redirected to the location of the new incident to conduct a probe and produce an intermediate report on it. However, they were expected to continue their initial mission later.
“We are satisfied that our persistent calls for the return of the UN inspectors for an investigation of the previous episodes have finally borne fruit,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the Russian parliament.
Russia criticized the intermediate report presented at the UN last week, which some Western countries took as blaming the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad for the attack. Moscow says the evidence is not conclusive and argued that a more comprehensive assessment of the situation would prove that Syrian rebels could have been involved in both this and previous attacks.
“US officials compromised on chemical weapons, but they continue talking about how ‘the Syrian regime’, as they call it, is guilty of the use of chemical weapons without providing comprehensive proof. They constantly voice reservations that the plan to punish Damascus up to a military intervention is still in power,” he said.
Washington and its allies are pushing at the UN Security Council for a resolution which would support enforcement of the Syrian disarmament agreement under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. The chapter allows use of military force to put a UNSC decision into power.
Russia opposes any wording of the resolution which would open the door for automatic punitive measures against Damascus. It also expects the Security Council to wait for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to prepare a roadmap for destroying the chemical weapons stockpile in Syria.
“Chapter 7 may only be mentioned as an element of a set of measures to be taken against violators in case the implementation of the OPCW decision would be hampered by refusal to cooperate, failure to fulfill one’s obligations or if anyone, whoever it may be, uses chemical weapons,” the deputy FM explained.
Earlier Assad said in an interview that rebel forces may attack international inspectors monitoring Syrian chemical disarmament on the ground. He explained that such an attack could be blamed on Damascus and presented as an attempt his government to derail the process.
Moscow said it was certain that the Assad government will make good its pledge to get rid of its chemical weapons. It therefore fails to understand why the US wants the Security Council to pass a resolution offering Syria a direct threat, Ryabkov said.
“We won’t make the same mistake again; we learned our lesson in Libya very well,” he said in a reference to the UNSC resolution, which allowed countries to take all means necessary to implement a no-fly zone over the north African country in 2011.
The move was expected to prevent the forces of Muammar Gaddafi from bombing cities held by Libyan rebels, but in practice resulted in a NATO bombing campaign, which crippled Libya’s military and allowed rebel forces to take power. The Libyan strongman himself was brutally killed by the rebels rather than tried in a court of law for whatever crimes he was accused of.
US: Syria’s Chemical Weapons List ‘Surprisingly Complete’
Assad: Rebels Might Make Some Sites Tough to Access
by Jason Ditz, September 23, 2013
US officials were all set for Syria to miss the seven day “deadline” to deliver its lists official accounting of chemical weapons, but Syria took them by surprise, delivering the list a day early.
US officials familiar with the disclosure to the Office for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) say that the list is also surprisingly complete, which managed to lead officials to concede that it was an “encouraging” sign.
It is, of course, but that’s not the narrative the US has been pushing, and they’ve been so eager to dub Syria in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in the days since they signed it and so desperate to get international authorization for a war when that first inevitable hiccup comes, that an admission of progress is really surprising.
Beyond the US, Syrian President Bashar Assad affirmed his government’s willingness to let international experts access the sites, saying they’d be fine with doing so more or less immediately, but warning that some of the sites might not be easy to reach because of fighting with rebels.
That concern is very real, with Syria in the middle of an enormous civil war. Though officials see this as a process to be wrapped up by mid-2014, the reality is that it has been a multi-decade problem in other nations, and those nations didn’t have civil wars to complicate matters.
Additional items of note....
US Demands Syria Destroy Chemical Weapons Lickety-Split, But Says It Needs Decades To Safely Eliminate Its Own Chems
By Dave Lindorff on Sep 23, 2013
Sixteen years after signing the chemical weapons treaty, the US says it needs another 10 years to destroy its stocks of chemical arms. But it insists that Syria, in the midst of a civil war, eliminate its huge weapons stockpile in 8 months or face a bombing blitz.
