RUSSIAN Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that the documents submitted by Moscow to the UN on the use of chemical weapons in Syria will answer many questions, and that the use of chemical weapons is a serious issue that shouldn’t be used as an excuse for escalation, achieving geopolitical goals or political manoeuvring.
In a press conference with his Belarusian counterpart Vladimir Makei, Lavrov said that the results of Russia’s investigations into the use of chemical weapons in Syria show that the Sarin gas shells used in the Khan al-Asal area near Aleppo in March were manufactured in areas controlled by opposition groups.
Lavrov noted that US representatives weren’t convinced about these results, despite Russia sending a package containing 800 pages of documents supplemented with photographs, coordinates and detailed reports of the procedures and results of the investigation.
He affirmed that the samples acquired by Russia were not tampered with before arriving at the labs.
Lavrov noted that the affirmations issued by the British and the French of the Syrian government using chemical weapons had no evidential basis and no indication of time and place, nor was it confirmed that the samples they tested were acquired by those who conducted the test, as the said samples had been handed from one person to another, with some of these samples coming from journalists, all of which contradicts the principles of investigating such issues.
He said that Moscow doesn’t oppose publishing the results of its investigations, rejects any questioning of them and asserts that Russian experts gathered samples personally at the site of the attack and tested them in a lab licensed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), with the results concluding that the shells and Sarin gas which was in them contained materials showing they were homemade.
Lavrov said that other information acquired by Moscow indicates that the shells and the gas were manufactured in February in an area in Syria which was under the control of opposition groups at the time.
He asserted that Russia guarantees the precision of the investigation and that the experts didn’t let the acquired samples out of their sight for a single moment until the samples reached the labs.
Lavrov said that Russia, contrary to its western partners, doesn’t conceal its deductions, and that Russia sees no reason why the results of its investigations shouldn’t be made public, as they are convincing and should answer many questions.
Russian political analyst Vyacheslav Matuzov stressed that the US stance towards the crisis in Syria is ‘two-faced’ and cannot be focused on one approach.
In an interview with al-Mayadin TV channel on Wednesday, Matuzov stressed that the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart Lavrov agreed on shifting the crisis onto the political track – while the US continues arming the opposition.
He said that big amounts of weapons have been handed to the opposition in Syria and there are tens of thousands of foreign fighters fighting the Syrian army and committing crimes against the Syrian people.
He pointed out that Russia has clear proof that the chemical weapons, particularly the Sarin gas, were used in Aleppo by the armed terrorist groups affiliated to the opposition, to drag the US and the Western countries into interfering in Syria.
‘All the reports from the US and the Western countries on the Syrian army’s use of chemical weapons are not confirmed and have no proof,’ he concluded.
l The United Nations has meanwhile announced that it has accepted Syria’s invitation to the Head of the UN Investigation Team on the use of Chemical Weapons in Syria, Ake Sellstrom, and UN High Representative for Disarmament, Angela Kane, to visit Damascus for talks on cooperation in the investigations.
Sellstrom and Kane accepted the Syrian government’s invitation ‘with a view to completing the consultations on the modalities of cooperation required for the investigations to conduct a UN mission to investigate the use of chemical weapons in Syria’, said UN Secretary General Spokesman Martin Nesirky on Wednesday.
However, Russia announced on Tuesday that it had handed over proof of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian opposition in Aleppo to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Earlier in March, armed terrorist groups in Syria fired a rocket carrying chemical materials in Khan al-Assal in Aleppo, causing the deaths of 25 innocent civilians and the injury of 100 others.
In two identical letters last March, Syria invited the UN Secretary General and the Chairman of the UN Security Council to form a specialised, technical, independent and neutral mission to investigate the use of chemical weapons by terrorists in Khan al-Assal in Aleppo.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced on Wednesday that the documents and reports Russia has presented to the UN regarding the use of the chemical weapons in Syria are ‘serious’ and will answer many inquiries.
He asserted that the outcomes of his country’s investigations in this regard prove that the Sarin bombs used in Khan al-Assal were made in areas controlled by the armed terrorist groups.
l A prominent US senator has meanwhile called on the administration of President Barack Obama to ‘attack Syrian airfields, airplanes and massed artillery’.
The influential chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin (D-Mich.) who has returned from a fact-finding trip to the Middle East, also expressed support for arming the groups fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
‘Increased military pressure on Assad is the only way to achieve a negotiated settlement in Syria, which in turn is needed to restore stability to a region that certainly doesn’t need any more instability’ Levin said on Wednesday during a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
However, he conceded that the US public opposes an increased involvement in the Syrian conflict and that there is ‘no consensus’ on the issue on Capitol Hill.
Senator Levin and Senator Angus King (I-Maine) have spent five days in Jordan and Turkey talking to government officials, as well as US diplomatic and military personnel, about the conflict in Syria. The two senators also met with militant leaders including Salim Idriss, the leader of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA), and visited refugee camps along the Syrian border.
In a joint statement last Tuesday, Levin and King said the US and its allies should arm and train the militants and consider ‘options for limited, targeted strikes at airplanes, helicopters, missiles, tanks and artillery.’
The senators noted that ‘doing nothing may be the worst option of all,’ potentially destabilising US allies in the region, including Turkey and Jordan, and threatening Israeli interests.
In a letter last month, Sen. Levin, Sen. John McCain – a Republican from Arizona, and Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey called on President Obama to take ‘more decisive military actions’ against Syria.