Shulgin criticizes the western countries’ continuous attempts to politicize the OPCW’s work
Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Alexander Shulgin has criticized the continuous attempts by western countries to politicize the work of the OPCW and to use their authority to impose their own rules instead principles of the international law.
Shulgin said in a summary about the session of the OPCW’s Executive Council held between July 6th and 9th, that these countries always focus on targeting Syria and completely ignore the Syrian government’s cooperation with the OPCW since it joined the organization seven years ago.
He added that while western countries continued to criticize Syria, Russia hailed the Syrian government’s great cooperation with the OPCW’s work.
“Our colleague in the “Euronato” prefer not to take this fact into consideration and keep focusing on criticizing Syria,” he said with reference to the hostile stances of the NATO and European countries towards Syria.
Regarding the OPCW’s Investigation and Identification Team IIT, Sulgin said that the Russian side didn’t and will not recognize the legality of the OPCW’s attribution decision passed in June 2018, pointing out that this team is engaged in publishing suspicious reports that are used by some countries as an excuse to put pressure on other countries.
“This further politicizes the work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and divides its ranks,” he stessed.
In a related context, Shulgin denied the validity of the claims presented in the IIT’s report, submitted on April 11th, that “the Syrian Air Force dropped a chlorine bomb in February 2018 on the city of Saraqib in Idlib, which is controlled by the terrorists, to avenge the downing of a Russian “Su-25” plane by the terrorists.
He affirmed that Russia believes that the attempts of Western countries to artificially link the alleged chemical incident in Saraqib and the downing of a Russian Su-25 aircraft on the eve of that day is totally unacceptable, pointing out and this Russian stance was clearly expressed during the Executive Council’s session.
Hamda Mustafa