Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
New York-SANA – The politicization of the work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(OPCW) and its negative acts towards Syria have undermined the professionalism of its work and lost confidence in its impartiality and independence, which allowed Western states to use it as a platform to target Syria, Syria’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh, affirmed.
In a statement Friday during Arria-formula meeting on “Risks Stemming from the Politicization of the Activities of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons” , Sabbagh noted to the importance of this session in highlighting the dangerous roles in the work of the organization, which kept it from performing the tasks entrusted to it as a tool to ensure technical, professional, impartial and independent implementation of all provisions of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, indicating that Syria’s experience during the past ten years of working with the Technical Secretariat of OPCW witnessed unprecedented events in the history of the organization, and revealed many negative practices that its member states should pay attention to and review, insisting “The Technical Secretariat should correct its course.”
Sabbagh pointed out that among these negative practices is not respecting the provisions of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or the resource documents that were agreed upon between Syria and the technical secretariat of the organization regarding the work of the various teams of the organization in Syria, in addition to following wrong working methods and double standards during carrying out work and some investigations without informing Syria, the State party to the Convention.
This led to the commission of many serious violations and and serious deficiencies, especially with regard to collecting evidence and samples, witness statements, records, names of victims, etc., in addition to the lack of transparency after relying on open sources and dealing with terrorist organizations such as the “White Helmets” organization, the terrorist arm of “Jabhat al-Nusra,” set by the Security Council on the terrorist lists, Sabbagh went on to say.
Sabbagh added that among the negative practices are also frequent breaches of confidentiality and leakage of information from within the organization to the media and to non-party countries, in addition to tampering with evidence and samples inside the organization’s laboratories.
Sabbagh reaffirmed Syria’s categorical condemnation of the use of chemical weapons at any time and place by anyone and under any circumstances, and that it has never used these weapons, and that it basically no longer possesses any kind of chemical weapons.
