West uses OPCW as weapon to serve its agenda against Syria: Damascus

Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar al-Ja'afari has lambasted Western countries for their continued use of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the so-called “chemical file” of the Arab country as a weapon in a war imposed on the Syrian nation.

In a statement he delivered to a virtual session of the UN Security Council on “the Situation in Syria”, Ja'afari said the Western states are using the chemical watchdog and the so-called file of alleged “chemical attacks” in Syria as a tool to put pressure on Syria and politically blackmail it to serve their agendas in the Arab country and the region.

“Syria has... engaged in serious and constructive cooperation with the relevant UN mechanisms and OPCW and its Technical Secretariat, which has resulted in helping Syria get rid of its chemical stockpile, substances and production facilities, so Syria has no longer possessed any chemical weapons and substances or the production facilities since 2014,” he said, Syria’s official SANA news agency reported.

OPCW cover-up scandal shows ‘culture of lying central to Western narrative,’ ex-diplomat says

The OPCW’s cover-up scandal, under US pressure, of a Syria chemical weapons probe shows “the culture of lying has become so central to the Western narrative,” a former US Senate policy adviser and diplomat says.

However, Western governments and their allies have preferred to deny this truth and have never stopped pointing the finger at Damascus whenever an apparent chemical attack has taken place, Ja'afari further said.

His comments came just a month after Syria lambasted Western pressure aimed at forcing the OPCW and its member states to adopt a French draft resolution that falsely claimed “Syria’s non-abidance”.

Russia rejects any closed-door discussion of Syrian chemical case at UN Security Council

Such discussions would be held without the participation of Syria’s representative, but we’ll oppose that, the diplomat said.

Ja'afari asserted that the so-called French-Western draft resolution or any similar movement is a politicized act of hostility, aiming to accuse Syria of using chemical weapons and to absolve the terrorists who have repeatedly launched terrorist acts.

These Western-backed terrorists, he said, spare no effort to stage a chemical attack in a bid to accuse Syria and provide a pretext for Western states, particularly the US, to launch attacks on the Arab country like their attack on Shayrat Airbase in 2017.

On April 4, 2017, a suspected sarin gas attack hit the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria’s Idlib Province, killing more than 80 people. The West rushed to blame the incident on Damascus, with the US launching a missile attack against Shayrat Airbase in Syria’s Homs Province on April 7, 2017.

Washington claimed that the airfield had been the origin of the chemical attack. Damascus, however, said the Khan Shaykhun incident was a fabrication to justify the subsequent US missile strike.

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