Iran Urges Removing Ambiguities in OPCW’s Report on Khan Sheikhoun Incident
TEHRAN – The Iranian delegation attending the extraordinary meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague underlined the necessity for removing the ambiguities in the OPCW’s recent report on the alleged chemical attack in Syria’s Khan Sheikhoun town, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.
“The fact-finding delegation report on Khan Sheikhoun incident in Syria has some ambiguities about the resources, the ways of acquiring information, sampling and lack of visit to the place of the incident and we hope that the ambiguities of this report will be removed in cooperation with the Syrian government,” the delegation stressed.
The Iranian delegation expressed displeasure that despite the fact that the Syrian government voiced readiness to cooperate with the OPCW to send a fact-finding committee to Khan Sheikhoun and al-Shayrat airbase, unfortunately certain countries prevented dispatch of a committee and sufficed to indirect resources and samples.
The Iranian delegation also blasted the US for attacking a Syrian airbase on April 6, adding that the move ignored the OPCW’s legitimacy and position and was against the international laws.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad told reporters earlier this month that the Syrian government has serious doubts about the impartiality of a report by the Fact-Finding Mission of the OPCW on the alleged use of sarin in Syria’s Khan Sheikhoun on April 4.
“Despite the offer of the Syrian authorities, the OPCW experts refused to visit this settlement to take samples,” the diplomat said.
“How can we trust their conclusions if they had not visited the site,” Mekdad added.
Mekdad noted that citizens of Khan Sheikhoun earlier confirmed that there had not been any chemical attack and all the information had been fabricated by the armed gangs and the Western intelligence.
“The Syrian authorities also expressed readiness to provide an aircraft for the special mission for the arrival at the Shayrat airfield in the Homs province but its specialists did not use this opportunity,” he said.
H.M