Syrian Government’s more than 90 letters(!) to the Security Council, the Joint Investigative Mechanism and other bodies, containing documented evidence that ISIS possessed toxic chemicals obtained from Turkey remain unanswered to this day.
The latest chemical attack in Khan Shayk Hun, in Syria’s Idlib Governorate reportedly caused the deaths of at least seventy civilians and possibly injured more than two hundred. The reported chemical weapons attack took place on the 4th of April.
The Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had informed that the OPCW-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism was gathering and analysing information from all available sources, and would be prepared to deploy a team at the earliest opportunity.
Speaking at the Security Council emergency meeting on the day after the attack (5 April 2017) Syria’s permanent representative to the UN directly accused certain Security Council permanent members. He said that some Council members ‘had made statements today that proved unequivocally that Syria was the victim of two aggressions: first, an attack by the Council’s permanent members; and second, a proxy attack by armed terrorist groups operating under their instructions.
Mr. Mounzer Mounzer added: Both seemed to have an appetite for fabricating information and rejected all false claims and allegations that the Syrian army had used chemical weapons in Khan Shayk Hun. The Government did not possess such weapons in any form, he stressed declaring: We have never used them and we will never use them.
He emphasized that while Syria had worked with OPCW and honoured all its obligations under the Convention, some Council members, as well as Turkey, continued to levy false against Damascus, in addition to blackmailing Syria and its allies, obstructing peace talks and ending all prospects for a political solution to the crisis — even if children paid the price. Recalling his country’s expression of concern over possession of chemical weapons by terrorist groups during last March talks in Geneva, he also drew attention to more than 90 letters that the Syrian Government had addressed to the Council, the Joint Investigative Mechanism and other bodies, containing documented evidence that Da’esh (ISIS) possessed toxic chemicals obtained from Turkey.
The Syrian representative pointed out that in this regard the real beneficiaries of the use of chemical weapons were the very countries that had advocated regime change for long years.
Mr. Mounzer placed squarely the responsibility on the former colonial power of Syria. He pointed the finger to France, in particular, as being responsible for a number of barbaric massacres in Syria last year, as well as the recent air strike in Deir ez-Zor which had claimed the lives of many civilians.
It is not an unfair inference to suspect France, seconded by the UK and the US, as the prime non-movers – or in other words breaks – to the international process of thorough investigation of the latest chemical weapons attack in Syria.
In addition, the refusal of the OPCW and the rest of the international bodies to examine the evidence provided by Damascus on Ankara’s aiding and abetting chemical attacks by ISIS in Syria does not bode well for the prospects of achieving peace in the troubled Arab country. Neither does it bode any better for Turkey’s credibility in the talks aimed at achieving a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem.
If anything Turkey’s feeding of ISIS with toxic chemicals in order to attack civilian Syrian population proves one more time that Ankara is not just only a dishonest broker as far as regional conflicts are concerned but that Turkey’s government should be investigated and punished for yet another committed war crime …