Moscow will oppose Western attempts to impose sanctions against Damascus at the upcoming conference of States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), Russian Foreign Ministry official representative Maria Zakharova said this at a briefing on Friday.
"The collective West, absolutely cynically destroying the norms of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, bypassing the organization's executive board, is seeking to impose sanctions against Damascus at the upcoming conference of states parties to the convention. <...> We will oppose this venture. We are saying that through the efforts of the United States and the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW manipulated by them, the organization has turned into a tool for serving the geopolitical interests of a small group of selected countries, whose notorious solidarity, which is not solidarity, but simply pandering to one another, is increasingly replacing common sense and a sense of reality," Zakharova said.
"This is not the first time that the United States of America and their associates in the OPCW have used this technology platform for groundless accusations of Syria's use of chemical weapons," she added.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson stressed that the OPCW investigations in Syria are politicized and "have not been credible for a long time". In particular, the diplomat recalled the falsified report on the chemical incident in the Syrian city of Duma in April 2018 and the provocation a year earlier in Khan Sheikhoun: both of these episodes were "convincingly refuted by Russian military experts."
Zakharova also drew attention to the fact that the US has not yet destroyed its chemical weapons, despite its obligations, and called on the OPCW Technical Secretariat to draw attention to this "blatant violation of international law".
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from TASS