Foreign Ministry statement

The three western permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, Great Britain and France – put out a statement on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the tragedy in Eastern Ghouta, where, according to various estimates, over a thousand of Syrian civilians were killed with sarin. Once again, Bashar al-Assad is accused of using chemical weapon without recourse.

It is deeply regrettable that Washington, London and Paris used this tragic date for the entire Syrian people and the international community to promote their destructive agenda of discrediting the president of the Syrian Arab Republic. To this end, a number of Western and Middle Eastern states are not above inhuman provocations such as the chemical attack carried out by terrorists in Eastern Ghouta on orders from their foreign sponsors.

It is obvious to everyone, including independent experts, that ISIS, militants of the “moderate” opposition and affiliated non-governmental organisations created and financed from abroad, such as the infamous White Helmets, are behind this and other similar cruel attacks. It is no coincidence that as more of Syria is liberated from terrorists, the White Helmets are hurriedly being evacuated from the country. It is probably done to hide the truth about their goals and criminal activities.

Once again we have to state that everything related to the Syrian “chemical dossier” initiated by Western states is directly connected with their ambition to advance their own geopolitical interests in the Middle East. In this context we see repeated attempts to transform the purely technical Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons into an instrument of political pressure by vesting its Technical Secretariat with attributive functions to identify those responsible for using chemical weapons, which are not stipulated in the Chemical Weapons Convention.

We call on the self-professed protectors of the Syrian people’s interests and those who follow their destructive agenda to stop manipulating the issue of chemical weapons to pressurise Damascus and its allies.