Russia rejects any closed-door discussion of Syrian chemical case at UN Security Council
Russia’s permanent ambassador to the United Nations says Moscow will oppose any attempt to return to closed-door discussions on the purported use of chemical arms in Syria at the UN Security Council.
Vassily Nebenzia, the permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, said on Monday that the United Kingdom, which will become the head of the Council for the month of February, has proposed to return to discussing Syria’s chemical case behind closed doors.
He added, in an interview with TASS news agency, that such discussions would be held “without video conference and also without the participation of the representative of Syria, but we’ll oppose that.”
“With our initiative, these sessions have become open, and we do not see why they should hide from the public community,” Nebenzia further said, as cited by Syria’s official SANA news agency.
The Russian envoy said the international community must be aware of what is going on about the chemical file in Syria, “so we would insist that the meeting be open.”
The Syrian government surrendered its stockpiles of chemical weapons in 2013 to a joint mission led by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry.
However, Western governments and their allies have never stopped pointing the finger at Damascus whenever an apparent chemical attack has taken place.
Damascus has time and again strongly denied any use of chemical weapons, saying it is not in possession of such weapons and remains committed to cooperating with OPCW.
On January 5, Syria lambasted Western pressure aimed at forcing the OPCW and its member states to adopt a French-Western draft resolution that falsely claimed its “Syria’s non-abidance” by the obligations according to the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Damascus further stressed that any resolution that would be released by the Executive Council based on the fabrications of the OPCW Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) was a politicized resolution with the aim of accusing the Syrian government of using chemical weapons and acquitting the terrorists and their sponsors.
Back in December, Syria emphasized the necessity of closing its chemical file for good after it fulfilled all the obligations entailed by its accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013.
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