Iran Hopes for Removing Ambiguities in OPCW's Report on Khan Sheikhoun Incident

Rasa - The Iranian delegation attending the extraordinary meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague underlined the necessity for removing the ambiguities in the OPCW's recent report on the chemical attack in Syria's Khan Sheikhoun region.

News ID: 430865

Date: 08 July 2017 - 23:13

RNA - "The fact-finding delegation report on Khan Sheikhoun incident in Syria has some ambiguities about the resources, the ways of acquiring information, sampling and lack of visit to the place of the incident and we hope that the ambiguities of this report will be removed in cooperation with the Syrian government," the delegation stressed.

The Iranian delegation expressed displeasure that despite the fact that the Syrian government voiced readiness to cooperate with the OPCW to send a fact-finding committee to Khan Sheikhoun and al-Shayrat airbase, unfortunately certain countries prevented dispatch of a committee and sufficed to indirect resources and samples.

The Iranian delegation also blasted the US for attacking a Syrian airbase on April 6, adding that the move ignored the OPCW's legitimacy and positon and was against the international laws.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told reporters earlier this month that the Syrian government has serious doubts about the impartiality of a report by the Fact-Finding Mission of the OPCW on the alleged use of sarin in Syria’s Khan Sheikhoun on April 4.

“Despite the offer of the Syrian authorities, the OPCW experts refused to visit this settlement to take samples,” the diplomat said.

“How can we trust their conclusions if they had not visited the site,” Mekdad added.

Mekdad noted that citizens of Khan Sheikhoun earlier confirmed that there had not been any chemical attack and all the information had been fabricated by the armed gangs and the Western intelligence.

“The Syrian authorities also expressed readiness to provide an aircraft for the special mission for the arrival at the Shayrat airfield in the Homs province but its specialists did not use this opportunity,” he said.

“The United States did not allow them to go there to avoid a revelation.”

The OPCW report says that sarin or a similar nerve agent was sprayed in the city of Khan Sheikhoun. As a result, 100 people were killed.

The incident involving the alleged use of chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun in the Idlib province took place on April 4.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, Syrian aircraft struck terrorists’ workshops that were producing chemical agents.

Washington accused Damascus of using chemical weapons, after which the US Navy delivered a missile strike on a Syrian military airfield in the province of Homs.

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