Belousov: Washington blocked Russian draft resolution on the activity of the OPCW

Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva Andrey Belousov stressed that the United States has put pressure on the representatives of a number of countries at the UN in order to prevent the review of Russia’s draft resolution on the activity of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by the General Assembly.

TASS News Agency reported on Saturday that Belousov told journalists that “Unfortunately, this year, the Russian draft resolution on the mechanisms of the UN Secretary General in investigating the cases of the possible use of chemical and biological weapons was not approved. The situation around our document was complex and opponents, led by the US, were conducting a powerful campaign on discrediting the project. As many delegations divulged to us, there was an unprecedented pressure on the part of the opponents on developing countries in order to prevent the approval of our project. This explains the results received during the vote.”

 “The important thing is that over a third of UN member states preferred either to abstain or to opt out of the vote altogether. This is their sovereign right, here we cannot judge them. Yet the fact remains that their decision was made not on the basis of a deep analysis of our document but solely for political motives,” the diplomat said.

Earlier, Russia yet again submitted to the First Committee of the UN General Assembly the draft resolution on implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention which provides for measures on preventing the politicization of OPCW’s operations. Russia repeatedly pointed out that giving the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW the authority to establish the responsibility of sides in various possible cases of the use of chemical weapons led to Western countries using the organization in order to attain their own geopolitical goals.

Hamda Mustafa