Sabbagh reaffirms Syria’s continuous cooperation with OPCW

Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Bassam Sabbagh has reaffirmed Syria’s continuous cooperation with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in order to close its chemical file.

During a Security Council session held on Thursday for discussing the chemical file in Syria, Sabbagh said that Syria calls on the OPCW member states to deal with this file based on its technical nature and urged the OPCW’s Technical Secretariat to adopt objectivity and neutrality when dealing with Syria’s chemical file.

He stressed that Syria has repeatedly condemned using chemical weapons by any one, at any time or in any place under any circumstances and it has asserted that it never used these prohibited weapons or any toxic chemical materials.

He explained that the first incident of using chemical weapons in Syria took place on March 19th, 2013, when terrorist groups fired a shell containing toxic chemical materials on Khan Al Assal area in Aleppo province that claimed the lives of 25 people, most of them were Syrian army personnel.

Sabbagh went on to say that Syria has voluntarily joined the Chemical Weapon Convention (CWC) in 2013 and it completed the destruction of its stockpile of chemical weapons and their production facilities in 2014.

He added that Syria affirms the illegality of forming the so-called “Investigation and Identification Team”, given the fact that the CWC didn’t give mandate to the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW to identify who is responsible for using the chemical weapons.

Hamda Mustafa