Shulgin: The United States always tries to use the OPCW as a tool to serve its political agenda

Damascus – Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons OPCW Alexander Shulgin  on Tuesday held a press conference at the buildong of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates in Damascus

The United States always tries to turn the OPCW into a tool to implement their political agenda, which damages the reputation of the organization, pointing out that the United States uses its allies to achieve its selfish goals, Shulgin said.

He added that the United States and its allies have worked to interfere in the work of the OPCW missions, like what happened in the Syrian city of Douma in 2018, with the aim of falsifying the conclusions of the investigations to accuse Syria of the attack and launch an aggression on the country.

“The Americans and their allies always try to manipulate the reports in order to be compatible with what they want, which is to blame Syria and the Syrian authorities, as they sent three unidentified persons from Washington to the fact-finding teams to attend the meetings and impose a certain version of what happened in Douma, and this was a blatant violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Shulgin said

He underscored that the role of the organization must be independent and impartial to monitor the non-proliferation of chemical weapons.

In response to a question about the final document of the 5th Conference of OPCW, Shulgin said: “The goal of this conference was to reach a final document and there were many challenges that the organization faced, and that the inspection missions must be at a high level to ensure that there are no violations of the OOCW’s agreements, , and the other challenge is the fight against chemical terrorism, because we have reasons that make us believe that there are ISIS terrorists who have access to the technologies used in the production of chemical weapons.”

He added that Russia and Syria had previously condemned the decision of giving the Technical Secretariat the responsibility of attributing to identify those who are responsible for the use of chemical weapons.

“This is an illegitimate decision and a violation of the OPCW’s Convention and the UN Security Council’s powers,” Shulgin asserted, clarifying that the fact-finding mission continued to adopt a hostile approach against Syria and hinder the efforts being made to present the facts despite the unprecedented openness shown by the Syrian government to the organization’s missions and the measures taken to facilitate its work.

As for the reason for not closing the chemical weapons file in Syria, Shulgin stressed that the OPCW’s mission team who are responsible for Syria does not intend to put an end to this file because they were ordered by Western countries to put endless pressure to achieve their political and geopolitical goals in Syria.

Shulgin concluded by saying: “They were desperately trying to achieve a military victory over Syria, its people and its army, but its army was strong in expelling this aggression and terrorism carried out by armed terrorist groups, and they are still trying to obtain a result that matches their agenda regarding political concessions, especially this kind of pressure, which come within the framework of the activities of the Chemical Weapons Organization.”

Basma Qaddour/ Hamda Mustafa