Ambassador Sabbagh: Syria has met all its obligations and completely eliminated its chemical weapons and production facilities

The Hague (ST): Syria has reiterated that it has met all its commitments relating to the Chemical Weapons’ Convention, referring that the media campaigns of escalation and distortion carried out by the US and its Western allies through disseminating lies to defame Syria’s image and mislead world public opinion would not shake its determination and will to press ahead with implementing its commitments.

Syria’s permanent representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons ( OPCW), Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh, said before the twenty-fifth session of the Conference of the States parties in the Convention on the Prohibition of Weapons that since Syria’s  joining of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2013, it has met all its obligations and fulfilled the elimination of its chemical weapons and production facilities in an ideal and unprecedented way under hard and complicated conditions it has confronted during the ten-year war on terrorism that covered all the Syrian territories.

 The Syrian diplomat added that what has been done by Syria clearly expresses its keenness to commit to its obligations according to the Convention, while the US, which has been joining the Convention for a long time, is still lingering in destroying its nuclear arsenal and its production facilities.

He went on to say  that Syria affirms the need for serious work to realize the universality of the Convention and urges the Organization to increase its efforts to call on Israel, which has not yet joined the Convention to join and guarantee the formation of an effective global system against chemical weapons, noting that Syria supports making the Middle East region free from weapons of mass destruction to guarantee regional security and peace which would not be achieved without obliging Israel to join all international agreements that prohibit the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Sabbagh clarified that the recurrent attacks perpetrated by “Israel” in the Middle East region, chiefly against the Syrian sovereignty, is evidence that testifies its threat to the security and stability of the region and proves its involvement in supporting terrorist groups and obstructing their defeat by the Syrian Arab Army.

The ambassador stressed that Syria firmly rejects the use of chemical weapons from any party, under any circumstances and in any place, and affirms that it has never used any chemical substances as weapons in any Syrian village or city and that it no longer possesses any chemical weapons since its elimination in 2014, and this was confirmed by the OPCW teams and their reports, stressing that the misleading media campaign waged by the US and its allies aim to defame the image of Syrian state.

Sabbagh also affirmed Syria’s keenness to follow up positive and constructive cooperation with the OPCW Technical Secretariat to settle all pending issues, noting that Syria welcomed the request of the Technical Secretariat to conduct the seventh evaluative tour on the Centre of Studies and Scientific Research.

The Syrian diplomat expressed astonishment at the continuity of the approach adopted by some Western states in covering the crimes committed by terrorist organizations and justifying the attacks launched by some Western states on the sovereignty of Syrian territories under the pretext of  using chemical weapons.

He indicated that it is unacceptable after the scandals that appeared in the reports of Aleppo and al-Latamenah to keep silent about the approach adopted by the fact-finding mission, noting that the US and Western pressure which hinders the correction of this approach is another evidence on the politicizing of the OPCW’s work and using it as a forum  to implement special agendas, particularly justifying the aggression on the Syrian territories.

He renewed Syria’s stand towards the illegitimacy of the so-called Investigation and Identification Team and its report which aimed to forge facts and accuse the Syrian air forces of using toxic chemical weapons in the town of al-Latamenah in 2017 denying categorically the use of chemical weapons in this village or in any Syrian village.

Concluding his speech, Sabbagh said that Syria called for international cooperation to confront the attempts made by some states to impose restrictions on the transfer of scientific technology for peaceful purposes to developing countries, in addition to imposing unilateral coercive measures  against other states with the aim of preventing them from achieving scientific and economic development in a flagrant violation of international law.

K.Q.