Al-Sabbagh: OPCW Suffers from Flagrant Politicization in a Bid to Change It into a Tool Serving Hostile and Subversive Policies

THE HAGUE– Syria’s Permanent Representative to CWC in Vienna, Ambassador Bassam al-Sabbagh, stated that since 2014, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has suffered from attempts of politicization in a bid to deviate it from its planned route and use it as a tool that serves hostile and subversive policies.

Al-Sabbagh made his remarks during a Special Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) held Tuesday in The Hague, according to SANA.

 He noted that the CWC constitutes the legal basis to deal with that dangerous type of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the OPCW is given the mandate to ensure the implementation of the convention’s provisions.

“Since 2011, the US has started to implement the “New Middle East” scheme which provides for changing regimes in the region though the adoption of subversive policy based on the so-called ‘Constructive Chaos’ theory which succeeded in undermining the security and stability of a number of states but failed to achieve its objectives in Syria despite shedding blood of innocent Syrians, destroying infrastructure and spending huge amounts of money, not to mention manipulating principles of international law and the persisting use of international forums to serve the objectives of that policy,” said the Syrian ambassador.

He regretted that the OPCW was among the victims of those malicious policies, adding that the failure of US plots in Syria pushed it to use the issue of chemical weapons and recruit terrorists who have been trained, funded and supplied with all kinds of weapons to stage incidents that ignite international public opinion and turn it against the Syrian government after which they use this organization as a vehicle for achieving its goals.

Al-Sabbagh said that Syria has made a strategic decision in September 2013 to join the OPCW, implemented all its obligations in destroying its entire chemical weapons program and fully cooperated with the OPCW Technical Secretariat in this regard.

Syria has strongly condemned the use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere, for any reason, and under any circumstances, meantime, it has cooperated with the OPCW Technical Secretariat to form a fact-finding team to probe into allegations of some states which sponsor terrorism in Syria, he added.

Al-Sabbagh said that Syria has repeatedly expressed its deep concern that some western states use the reports submitted by fact-finding team to serve their political agenda when the same states have resorted to the UN Security Council to establish Joint Investigative Mechanism of the UN and the OPCW to identify the side responsible for the use of chemical weapons, noting that the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism failed to perform its duty in a professional and transparent manner.

He pointed out that the current UK-drafted resolution provides another clear evidence on manipulation and exploitation, indicating to the hysterical campaigns and political and economic pressure imposed by the US to force its viewpoint, not to mention the misleading means and threats to gain support for the UK-drafted resolution.

Al-Sabbagh added that states which called to hold this special session and submitted a draft resolution against a CWC member state should have focused their efforts to confront the serious and real threat posed by the growth of international terrorism and the use of toxic chemicals as weapons by terrorist groups and implement the convention’s provisions, especially cutting off terrorists’ supply routes.

He urged the OPCW member states to keep their conscience clear and vote against the UK-drafted resolution, calling for eliminating the Israeli chemical weapons arsenal in order to establish the Middle East as a region free of chemical weapons.