Foreign Ministry Criticizes Glaring Contradictions, Errors in UN-OPCW Report, Condemns French Chemical Accusations

DAMASCUS– The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates on Monday sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General and the head of the Security Council on the report by the UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism issued on October 26, which contained a number of clear technical and legal contradictions and errors in the work of the OPCW fact-finding team and the joint investigative mechanism, adding that the report was written before the investigations even began, SANA reported.

 In the letter, the Ministry said that Western states and those who followed their example have carried out a process of methodical politicization to distort the goals of the investigation, and they did this by falsifying facts and submitting to the demands of those states that provides all kinds of support to terrorist groups, such as providing them with toxic chemicals and covering for them using media misdirection, with the US, France, Britain, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia exerting pressure on investigation teams to come up with the results these states want in order to justify their aggressive actions and policies.

The Ministry’s letter included a number of technical and legal notes that prove that the two investigation bodies have deviated from the goal for which they were established, and that they violated their legal and technical reference points that oblige them to make objective, impartial, and non-politicized reports.

The Ministry said that the team and the mechanism failed to abide by their mission by refusing to visit the site of the Khan Sheikhoun incident and al-Shuairat airbase and when they declined to commit to the chain of evidence preservation, in addition to them ignoring questions about the use of sarin gas by terrorists.

The letter said that the mechanism lacks methodology as it uses terms like “possibly” and “maybe” and “unconfirmed” which shows that it failed to carry out its tasks.

Foreign Ministry Condemns French Chemical Accusations against Syria

In the same context, an official source at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry denounced a statement by French Foreign Minister which accused Syria of using chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun incident.

In a statement to SANA, the official said the fact that the French statement based its accusations on the report of the Joint Investigative Mechanism and noted that the report agrees with the French national assessment of Khan Sheikhoun incident stresses that the report was produced in the lobbies of the U.S., British, French and Turkish intelligence services among others by relying on testimonies of terrorists from Jabhat al-Nusra.

The Foreign Ministry “stresses its rejection of this hostile French position and similar attitudes of Western countries,” the source said, reiterating its absolute rejection of the content of the Joint Investigative Mechanism’s report.

The source highlighted that the report came in implementation of the directions of the US administration and Western countries to practice more political pressure and hostile threats against Syria.

The source went on saying that the report also aims at covering up the terrorist groups’ responsibility for Khan Sheikhoun incident as well as these countries’ involvement in providing the terrorist groups with chemical weapons and substances which they have used in all chemical weapons incidents that occurred in Syria.

“The involvement of the former French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in the incident of the terrorist groups’ use of chemical weapons in the Eastern Ghouta of Damascus in August 2013 is a clear evidence of that,” the source said.

The similarity between France’s position and those of the US and other Western countries show that the French Foreign Ministry has not yet realized the reasons behind the total failure of its policy in the region, said the source, stressing that if France wants to participate in the international effort against terrorism, it must change its position and stop supporting the terrorist organizations.