Sabbagh: OPCW must restore its technical nature to regain credibility

NEW YORK–Syria’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh has affirmed that the politicized work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and its negative acts towards Syria have undermined its professionalism and led it to lose confidence in its impartiality and independence, which allowed Western states to use it as a platform to target Syria.

In a statement on Friday during a Security Council session in “Arria-formula” on “Risks Stemming from the Politicization of the Activities of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons”, Sabbagh noted the importance of this session in highlighting the dangerous roles in the work of the organization, which kept it away from performing the tasks entrusted to it as a tool to ensure technical, professional, impartial and independent implementation of all provisions of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

He indicated that Syria’s experience during the past ten years of working with the Technical Secretariat of OPCW witnessed unprecedented events in the history of the organization, and revealed many negative practices that the member states should pay attention to and review and that the Technical Secretariat should correct.

Sabbagh clarified among these negative practices is that the OPCW didn’t respect the provisions of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or the resource documents that were agreed upon between Syria and the technical secretariat of the organization regarding the work of the various teams of the organization in Syria.

It also adopted wrong working methods and double standards while carrying out its work and conducting some investigations without informing Syria, the State party to the Convention, he said, adding that such practices led to committing many serious violations and to serious deficiencies, especially with regard to collecting evidence and samples, witness statements, records, names of victims, etc..

In addition, Sabbagh pointed out that the OPCW showed lack of transparency after relying on open sources and dealing with terrorist organizations such as the “White Helmets” organization, the terrorist arm of “Jabhat al-Nusra,” included by the Security Council in the terrorist list.

Among other negative practices by the OPCW, according to Sabbagh, are the frequent breaches of confidentiality and leakage of information from within the organization to the media and to non-party countries, in addition to tampering with evidence and samples inside the organization’s laboratories.

He pointed out that the OPCW also didn’t adopt the consensual nature of decision-making within the organization and it allowed manipulating the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the mandate of the technical secretariat and invented some tasks that are not stipulated in the CWC and clearly violated the mandate of the Security Council.

Moreover, Sabbagh said, the OPCW issued reports that include unscientific and non-conclusive conclusions that are not based on concrete evidence and it drafted its reports in an unprofessional manner, focusing on the negative points, ignoring any positives points or any progress achieved and questioning all Syria’s reports.

All of these negative practices undermined the professionalism of the organization’s work, lost confidence in the impartiality and independence of the work of its technical secretariat, destroyed the credibility of the reports issued by the secretariat, and led this technical organization into a major circle of politicization that allowed some Western countries to use it as a platform to target the member state, Syria, Sabbagh stressed.

Regarding the work of the organization’s teams related to Syria, Sabbagh said that the OPCW established the “Declaration Evaluation Team”, but this team behaved out of its mandate and turned into a tool to conduct investigations that are not within its mandate.

He added that a “fact-finding mission” was also established by an agreement between the National Committee and the OPCW’s Technical Secretariat, but this mission did not adhere to the agreement and the professional methods of work, which led to inaccurate investigation results.

Sabbagh also noted the establishment of the “Joint Investigative Mechanism” under the Security Council Resolution No. 2235 of August 7, 2015, to identify the perpetrators of the chemical weapons attacks, mainly in Khan Sheikhoun area, but this mechanism was politicized, as head of this mechanism refused to collect samples from this area despite his arrival at the site, which negatively affected the credibility of the conclusions presented by the Mechanism and was a reason not to renew its mandate in the Security Council in 2017.

Sabbagh made it clear that after the failure to extend the “Joint Investigative Mechanism,” some western countries worked to create the so-called “Investigation and Identification Team” by manipulating the provisions of the CWC, and with the approval of less than half of the organization’s members, and beyond the mandate of the OPCW, which does not include the attribution of responsibility for the use of chemical weapons. For this reason, Syria and several other countries didn’t recognize the legality of this team and its conclusions, particularly regarding the alleged chemical incident in Douma in 2018.

Sabbagh reaffirmed Syria’s categorical condemnation of the use of chemical weapons at any time and place by anyone and under any circumstances, reiterating that Syria has never used these weapons and it basically no longer possesses any kind of chemical weapons.

Edited by Hamda Mustafa

Source: Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)