PRESS RELEASE
West Fails at UNSC to Pass Resolution Blaming Syria for Chemical Attack
April 5, 2017 (EIRNS)—The United States, the United Kingdom, and France convened an emergency session of the UN Security Council today, to urge passage of a hastily- and shoddily-written resolution that blames Syria for the chemical weapons attack which occurred April 4 in Khan Sheikhun, in Syria’s Idlib region. The resolution did not pass, voted down by Russia, China, and Bolivia.
Despite the fact that there is no conclusive evidence proving the West’s claim that the Syrian Air Force carried out the attack that killed 100 people, as the UN’s Acting High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Kim Won-Soo had to admit at today’s UNSC session, this didn’t prevent the representatives of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and their allies from insisting that only the Syrian Air Force possesses the capability to launch such an attack. Led by the United Kingdom, they also directly accused Russia and China of complicity, because both have previously vetoed anti-Syria resolutions.
As Russia’s UN Deputy acting envoy, Vladimir Zafronkov, pointed out in his remarks to the UNSC, the resolution presented by France, the United States, and the United Kingdom was clearly written in great haste, formulated so as to imply that only the Syrian government could have carried out such an attack.
"Have you even checked what you wrote?" he asked the resolution’s authors. It is, he said, ideological, biased, and based on contradictory evidence from such discredited sources as the Syria Observatory on Human Rights, based in London, and the White Helmets, recognized as connected to al-Qaeda forces. "To approve it would be wrong."
Expressing "outrage" and "horror" that Syrians are suffering from chemical attacks, the resolution arrogantly issues a series of ultimata to the Syrian government—nary a mention of terrorists—demanding detailed information on Syrian flight plans and air operations from April 4, meetings with military officers "within no more than five days of the date on which such a meeting is requested," and full access to relevant bases "from which the JIM [Joint Investigative Mechanism] and FFM [Fact-Finding Mission] believe attacks involving chemicals as weapons may have been launched" (emphasis added). The UN Secretary General is ordered to report to the UNSC every 30 days on whether Syria is providing the information demanded.
In contrast, this morning Russia’s Chief of the Defense Directorate of Media Services Gen. Igor Konashenkov, reported in detail that a Syrian aircraft had carried out an airstrike on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhun,
"targeting a major ammunition storage facility of terrorists and a cluster of military hardware. The territory of the storage facility housed workshops of projectiles stuffed with toxic agents."
As reported by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told pan-Arab Mayadeen TV that the Assad government had provided documented reports to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the UNSC over the "past few weeks" about the smuggling of toxic materials into northern Syria by the al Qaeda-linked al Nusra Front.
