OPCW Announces Readiness to Send Experts to Khan Sheikoun

 The HAGUE, (ST)- The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has announced that it will send experts to the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idleb countryside to investigate alleged use of chemical weapons, pointing out that it hasn’t specified who is behind the alleged use of chemical weapon there.

 The Russian Itar Tass News Agency quoted Ahmed Uzumcu, the OPCW Director Genera,l as saying to journalists in the Hague, that ” the organization is ready to send its experts to Khan Sheikhoun. The team has become ready to go there and we have volunteers in this respect.”

Last week, the majority of OPCW member countries refused a suggestion put forward by Russia and Iran on forming a new team to investigate allegations of using chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun and to visit the Homs’ Shayrat airfield, which was attacked by the United States, as to investigate the US claims about storing chemical weapons inside the airbase.

Uzumcu acknowledged that the problem that hinders sending the investigation team deals with the fact that the targeted area is located in Idleb countryside and is held by “the different factions of opposition”. He reiterated the need to reach understanding with these factions before sending the experts.

On April 4, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates denied claims that the Syrian government used toxic gases in Khan Sheikhoun or in any other village or city in Syria. It affirmed that the Syrian Arab army doesn’t have any kind of chemical weapon and that it hasn’t used these weapons and won’t use them in future and it even doesn’t seek possessing them.

Ulyanov hopes experts will arrive in Khan Sheikhoun soon

Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s head of nonproliferation told Sputnik that sending the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW) team to the site of a recent chemical incident in Syria would help establish the truth.

“We have seriously criticized the practice of remote investigations, which has in recent years become familiar to the OPCW mission in establishing facts of the possible use of chemical weapons,” Ulyanov said.

Ulyanov said Moscow is verifying Friday’s reports that OPCW chief Ahmet Uzumcu had expressed willingness to dispatch an expert team to Khan Shaykhun in Idlib province, the target of an alleged April 4 attack.

“We insisted that OPCW experts must visit the scene of the incident, select the samples themselves and thoroughly get to the bottom of the details,” he stressed.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s head of nonproliferation hopes the OPCW will dispatch its “balanced” expert team to the site of an alleged chemical incident in Syria as soon possible.

“Now that the leadership of the OPCW secretariat seems to have agreed with our opinion, it is important that the fact-finding mission travels to the scene as soon as possible,” Ulyanov said.

Noting the difficulty of detecting sarin more than three weeks after the reported April 4 attack, he said “in any case, the experts’ trip to Khan Shaykhun will allow us to come closer to establishing the truth.”

“We also expect that the composition of the mission will be balanced in accordance with customary international practice, as stipulated in the Chemical Weapons Convention and the mission’s mandate,” Ulyanov said.

Hamda Mustafa