Syria avoiding full co-operation with chemical weapons watchdog, UN says

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been investigating allegations of chemical weapons use in the country since 2014

A Syrian boy holds an oxygen mask over the face of an infant following a reported gas attack in Douma in 2018. AFP

Syria is avoiding full co-operation on a series of issues with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the top UN official for disarmament said on Monday.

Addressing the Security Council in New York, Izumi Nakamitsu, undersecretary general of disarmament affairs, said the OPCW's attempts to address issues in Syria — including figures on nerve agents produced at a facility previously declared by Damascus as never having been used for chemical weapons production — have hit a roadblock.

“Full co-operation by the Syrian Arab Republic with the OPCW Technical Secretariat is essential to closing all outstanding issues,” she said.

She said the agency has “yet to receive any declarations or documents” from Syria to address these issues.

According to Ms Nakamitsu, these include the complete declaration of activities at the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, which, in 2013, US intelligence officials concluded had been involved in preparing chemical munitions.

The Syrian government agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons programme under the supervision of the OPCW in 2013, following a chemical attack in a Damascus suburb that killed hundreds.

The OPCW began investigating allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria the following year, and in 2018, the organisation was granted new powers to assign blame for chemical attacks.

The global chemical weapons agency in January of this year found the Syrian regime responsible for a poison gas attack that killed 43 people in Douma, near Damascus, in April 2018.

In a report nearly five years in the making, the OPCW found the canisters carrying poison gas had been dropped by a Syrian air force helicopter over Douma, which was one of the last opposition strongholds near the capital.

Allegations of chemical weapons use have continued to surface since then, with both the Syrian government and opposition groups accused of using them.

On Sunday, the Arab League readmitted Syria after more than a decade of suspension, consolidating a regional push to normalise ties with the Assad regime in a move criticised by Washington.

“We do not believe that Syria merits readmission to the Arab League at this time,” US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.

Robert Wood, US Deputy Ambassador to the UN, called on Syrian authorities to provide the OPCW with immediate and unfettered access to address the outstanding issues.

He said that “fulsome consultations” with the chemical weapons assessment team was necessary, as Syria “will not fully disclose and verifiably eliminate its chemical weapons programme”.

Mr Wood further pointed out that the Syrian government has only revealed more of its chemical weapons programme following investigations by the agency on seven separate occasions.

He also criticised Russia's shielding of Syria's defiant behaviour, which he said enables the regime of President Bashar Al Assad and leaves Syrian civilians facing the possibility of further chemical weapons attacks.

Russia's deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky stressed that there has been no significant progress on the ground that would require the attention of the Security Council.

The OPCW, Mr Polyansky said, has turned into “an obedient instrument in the hands of the West”.

“Our western colleagues play deaf and dumb when it suits them,” he asserted, saying that their only goal was to cover up the agency's manipulations of events.

Switzerland’s UN ambassador Pascale Baeriswyl reminded the council that the use of chemical weapons in the context of armed violence could “constitute war crimes”.