Comment by the Information and Press Department concerning the UN Security Council’s adoption of the resolution regarding the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon in the Syrian Arab Republic

On March 6, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2209 on alleged use of chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in Syria. This step was taken in view of the corresponding decision by the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) based on the interim reports prepared by its Special Mission established in order to find the facts of a possible use of toxic chlorinated chemicals on Syrian territory for military purposes.

Official statements and comments by certain foreign media, which appeared in this regard in some Western countries, are perplexing. They categorically lay the responsibility for the incidents involving chlorine in Syria with Damascus. It is stated that the Security Council Resolution 2209 may be the last warning to the Syrian authorities before a possible future use of sanctions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

We would like to emphasise that neither Resolution 2209, nor the said decision by the OPCW Executive Council have any indications of guilt of any of the parties to the conflict in Syria regarding the use of toxic chemicals, since there’s no any hard evidence to that effect. Moreover, the OPCW Special Mission will continue the investigation in Syria in the near future with regard to incoming information about the use of toxic chemicals there, including the analysis of information submitted to the Organisation by Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2014. According to this information, there have been instances where nongovernment actors captured industrial facilities with chlorine stocks in Syria, which provides good grounds to assume the involvement of armed Syrian opposition members in the subsequent use of this chemical for provocative or terrorist purposes. By the way, similar instances have been documented on many occasions in Iraq.

If the situation with finding those guilty of using chlorine in Syria was so unequivocal, as some Western politicians and the media try to make it look, any further work by the OPCW fact-finding mission would be meaningless. Only the governing bodies of the OPCW, which is a specialised international organisation, have the necessary expertise and capacity to fully assess the situation regarding the possible use of chemical weapons.

We see the importance of UN Security Council Resolution 2209 in the fact that it resolutely condemns the use of toxic chemicals as chemical weapons by whoever it may be, and not only in Syria. The resolution contains a warning about the responsibility for such crimes before the international community. That is why the Russian Federation voted in favour of this resolution. Other interpretations of its content and focus are biased and inconsistent with the actual state of affairs.