Russia expects that the recognition of the facts of manipulation in connection with the incident in the city of Duma in Syria in April 2018 will return the work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to a depoliticized channel. This is stated in a comment issued on Thursday by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The reason for the comment was the article published on July 24 in the oldest weekly publication The Nation article, in which, as the Ministry noted, "in the most detailed way restored the real picture with the manipulation of" the report of the special mission of the OPCW to establish the facts of use of chemical weapons in connection with a resonant incident in the Duma.
"Despite the fact that all these facts are already widely known, they first appeared on the pages of such a solid and authoritative Western publication. We hope that we will still be able to sort out this very unpleasant story in order to return the OPCW's work to a professional, depoliticized and technical direction, as stipulated by the Convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons."
The Ministry stressed that the described manipulations have been discussed by numerous international independent experts, public and political figures, and media representatives for the second year. "It even came to a collective appeal to the States parties to the Convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons and personally to the UN Secretary-General as its Depositary to understand the situation and take urgent measures aimed at restoring confidence in the OPCW Technical Secretariat," the Foreign Ministry recalled.
Russia and her supporters constantly bring up this question at the site of the OPCW, said in the comments, but there is no clear response to these numerous appeal. "It seems that the problem is simply trying to be "hush up", but would not take the whole of this hard-hitting story, showing that the reports of the special mission of the OPCW deliberately distorted to including to justify the actions of the United States, Britain and France, who inflicted missile strikes on the territory of an independent state in violation of the UN Charter and universally recognized norms of international law. The end of this kind of military and political provocations and adventures is well known on the example of Iraq and Libya," the text says.
The incident in Duma
Reports of the use of chemical weapons in Syrian Duma on April 7, 2018 were distributed by a number of non-governmental organizations, including the White helmets. Representatives of the Russian Center for reconciliation of warring parties conducted a survey of Duma on April 9, 2018, but found no traces of the use of chemical weapons there. The United States, Britain and France launched a massive strike on Syria on April 14, 2018 without UN Security Council sanctions. The attack targeted a research center in Damascus, the headquarters of the Republican guard, an air defense base, several military airfields and army warehouses. After that, Washington, London and Paris said that the strikes were in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in Duma.
The OPCW's final report of more than 100 pages on the Duma incident was distributed to the organization's member states and handed over to the UN Security Council on March 1, 2019. It noted that a toxic chemical containing chlorine was used as a weapon in Duma. At the same time, the document claimed that cylinders with chemicals found at the scene of the incident were dropped from the air. In May, a new document was posted on the Internet, under the name of OPCW expert Ian Henderson. It claims that it is highly likely that both cylinders were placed at the site of the attack manually, and not dropped from the air. However, these conclusions, which speak in favor of the version of Russia and Syria about the staged nature of the incident, were not included in the final report.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
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Based on materials from TASS