Bad Chemistry at the UN under Pressure from US Intelligence

Under pressure from the Pentagon and the CIA, the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are again looking into alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian army forces. A source in Russian diplomatic circles shared this information with Izvestia:

“The American military and intelligence services are using any opportunity to prevent even a whiff of stabilization in Syria. Because of this, we are discussing matters that seemed long settled. One of these topics is chemical weapons, which they are pressuring the U.N. and OPCW to continue discussing.”

The deputy head of the Federation Council International Affairs Committee, Vladimir Dzhabarov, told Izvestia that for several players, the issue of chemical weapons is the last opportunity to oust the government in Damascus.

“All of the other arguments have been made. Through our initiative, the Syrian side has agreed to destroy or ship out all chemical weapons. There are no facts confirming that they have been used. Now that the government forces are gaining victories and freeing territory from ISIS and other terrorist organizations, certain politicians in the West, who dream of ousting Bashar al-Assad, do not like that one bit. That’s why the subject of chemical weapons is being actively pushed forward. This well-known and proven scare tactic worked in Iraq (during Saddam Hussein’s rule) and now it’s being used against the Syrian government,” Dzhabarov noted.

The U.N. and OPCW’s joint mission to investigate the use of chemical weapons in Syria published a report on Aug. 24, which describes at least two instances where the Syrian army used chemical weapons. The report states that containers full of chlorine gas were dropped from an army helicopter on the village of Talmenes in April 2014 and on the town of Sarmin in March 2015. The report also notes that Islamic State forces were responsible for one mustard gas attack.

On Aug. 30 during a U.N. Security Council session where the question of chemical weapons was discussed, the U.S., British and French representatives demanded that those responsible for the use of chemical weapons be brought to justice.

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., stated, “It is essential that the members of the Security Council come together to ensure consequences for those who have used chemical weapons in Syria.” Speaking in turn, United Kingdom representative Matthew Rycroft declared that it was imperative to work together to stop the use of chemical weapons and to get justice for the victims of these weapons. The U.N. permanent representative for France, Francois Delattre, demanded a “…quick and strong Security Council response.”

The Russian permanent representative to the U.N., Vitaliy Churkin, however, noted that “the proof outlined in the report for them [the conclusions of the joint U.N. and OPCW investigative task force] raises serious doubts.”

The diplomat said that the writers of the report “basically admit themselves the uncertainty of their body of proof, often using language that indicates supposition and not statements of established fact.

“As a result, it begs the question: how could such definitive conclusions have been made with this amount of allowance, supposition and with such indeterminate evidence?” Vitaly Churkin asked the other members of the Security Council.

Syrian political scientist Ahmad Subhan believes that the accusations of using chemical weapons have unequivocally been fabricated.

“The whole situation seems ridiculous. The Syrian army has no reason to use chemical weapons. Conventional weapons are sufficient to fight terrorists; to then also use chemical weapons, if they even had any remaining in their arsenal, would be disastrous from a political perspective. So the published report contains an obvious lie, the source of which, almost certainly, is the similarly false evidence of the so-called ‘moderate Syrian opposition’ and the news media that sides with them,” insists Ahmad Subhan.

This isn’t the end of the story of chemical weapons in Syria. As Virginia Gamba, head of the of the U.N. and OPCW joint mission noted, the investigation of three further uses of chemical weapons in Syria will conclude in September.