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Syria hands materials to Russia over chemical weapons attack
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Syria has turned over materials to Russia which aim to show a chemical weapons attack last month was carried out by rebels, a top Russian diplomat visiting Damascus and a Syrian official said yesterday.
The August 21 attack precipitated the current high tensions over Syria’s chemical weapons and sparked a plan under which it is to abandon them. A report by UN investigators confirmed chemical weapons were used on August 21 but did not say by which side in the civil war.
The ITAR-Tass news agency yesterday quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying Syria told Russian officials the material it handed over shows “rebels participating in the chemical attack” but that Russia has not yet drawn any conclusions.
He also told broadcaster Russia Today that Russia has submitted to the UN Security Council abundant and credible evidence suggesting it was not the government that fired the chemical weapons.
“We are unhappy about this report, we think that the report was distorted, it was one-sided, the basis of information upon which it was built is insufficient,” he said, referring to the UN report.
Also, Syrian President Bashar Assad yesterday received a US delegation of former members of Congress and anti-war activists including former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
“Policies adopted by the American administration that are based on launching wars, intervening in other countries affairs and imposing hegemony on people do not achieve the interests of American people and contradicts with their values and principals,” SANA quoted Assad telling the US delegation.
Assigning responsibility for last month’s attack has become a heated international diplomatic issue. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his French counterpart Laurent Fabius sharply differed on the topic after meeting in Moscow on Tuesday. Lavrov said Moscow has reason to believe the attack was a provocation staged by the rebels, while Fabius said the evidence clearly implicates the government side.
Russia also has repeatedly claimed a chemical weapons attack in Syria on March 19 was committed by the rebels.
The reports did not specify the nature of the new material turned over by Syria to Russia, which Ryabkov said would be closely analyzed.
“But considering that earlier we came to the corresponding conclusion about the incident of March 19, we are inclined to treat with great seriousness the material from the Syrian side about the involvement of the rebels in the chemical attack of August 21,” Ryabkov said, according to ITAR-Tass.
The chief UN chemical weapons inspector said his team will return to Syria “within weeks” to complete its investigation.
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