5 December 2024
Point of order:
Mr. President,
You have not announced the second briefer, but it is precisely the subject of my point of order remark. I guess you will announce the briefer after my remarks.
Before this meeting begins, I would like to once again draw the attention of Security Council members to the fact that the first week of the US presidency of the UNSC has been marked by so many gross procedural violations and clumsy manipulations that they would suffice for a year to come.
What is clear is that in attempt to advance its agenda, the outgoing American administration and its team are not even make a semblance of playing by the rules in the Security Council, while pursuing the sole purpose of cementing their ideological “priorities” on the UN platform before they leave. For the sake of this, for the third consecutive day, the Council has been compelled to listen to some heinous briefers from civil society, who not only fail to bring any “added value” to the discussion, but also – through their emotionally-charged and meaningless monologues – turn the Security Council meetings into a farce. This is precisely what the international community observed on Tuesday at the meeting on the situation in Syria, when the presidency invited well-known fabricators and liars from the “White Helmets” NGO. Exactly the same egregious situation was repeated yesterday at the meeting on the children’s issue in the context of the Ukrainian crisis, where a whole three NGO representatives actually spoke. After all, it is well known that the person sitting behind the “Ukraine” sign is a representative of civil society, and we never saw any confirmation that she in any way could be authorized to speak on behalf of a State. Obviously, in order to avoid uncomfortable questions, the presidency did not deem it necessary, contrary to established practice, to inform the members of the Security Council in advance that a State invited under rule 37 would be represented by a person other than its permanent representative. Nor was this person on the list of speakers circulated by the Secretariat.
There is no doubt that today’s briefer from civil society will also follow Washington’s playbook and will not offer any new useful prospective for the consideration of agenda items. What is the point of wasting Council members’ time on all this farce?
We are extremely concerned, since all this undermines the authority of the UN Security Council. The UNSC should not become a platform for American interparty squabbles and campaign rallies. If what we have seen this week continues all month long, if the American presidency continues to generously give Council “air time” to myriads propagandists, crooks, self-promoting “advisors” and “activists” – then by January, the Security Council meetings will look like nothing but tabloid talk shows. This will have disastrous consequences not only for the reputation of the Security Council but also for addressing the current crises on the ground.
We call on the presidency to reflect on this and on the members of the Security Council not to connive in such a policy.
Thank you.
Main statement:
Mr. President,
We thank High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu for her briefing. We’ve heard nothing fundamentally new today. The OPCW Technical Secretariat continues to obediently carry out Western orders to smear Syria as well as its allies. There have been promoted the hackney arguments about Syria’s alleged failure to comply with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). At the same time, what has been ignored is the assistance provided by Damascus to the staff of the Declaration Assessment Team (DAT), as well as the very fact that the Syrians still continue in good faith to cooperate with the OPCW, even though they had every reason to stop this cooperation after the West pushed through the decision to infringe on Damascus’s rights and priviliges under the CWC.
Any unbiased observer or expert – our Western colleagues are certainly not the ones – cannot deny that the Syrian authorities have demonstrated utmost responsibility when it comes to providing documentation to clarify existing questions related to the initial declaration. Among CWC parties, Syria remains the most inspected State. (over the past eleven years, 150 technical meetings have been held, 45 site visits have been made, 180 samples have been collected, and thousands of pages of documents have been received). But despite this, new far-fetched accusations against Damaskus continue to mount. It suffices to recall the most absurd story about baloons lonked to the 2018 incident in Douma, which were destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. The Western detractors of Syria are well aware of this, but they continue nonetheless to raise this issue, including in the Security Council Chamber.
Distinguished Colleagues,
We see no point in delving today into the technical details of the Syrian chemical dossier. We know for sure that during our meeting we will hear a great deal of criticism of Syria and possibly Russia, and, perhaps, we are going to witness today “the first run” of some new allegations. Let us note only the general scheme applicable to any of our meetings on the Syrian chemical file. Whatever Syria states, the West will not accept it. And whatever Syria may do, whatever goodwill steps it may undertake, the West will always ragard it as insufficient. Everything else is mere nuances, which are meaningless and in no way can break this scheme.
Instead of this technical discussion, we will try to take stock of the four-year work on the Syrian chemical file by our American colleagues – “lame ducks” ( as they say in the US say in such cases), who, as we all can see, in one month of their presidency are trying by hook or by crook to cement the priorities of the outgoing Biden administration, including the most radical and absurd anti-Syrian policies. Thus, given the factors I have just mentioned, there is no point whatsoever in discussing the implementation of resolution 2118. But on top of it, there is another serious reprecussion of the US policy, namely the catastrophic discruption of international cooperation on the implementation of the CWC as a whole, since our sly Western colleagues are playing the game “judge and accuse Syria and Russia contrary to facts and common sense” on two platforms at once – in New York and The Hague.
During this time, we have witnessed unprecedented fabrications and the most brazen lies, which, unfortunately, the OPCW Technical Secretariat is complicit in. Alas, Director General Fernando Arias has also actively involved in this, he has forgotten that he is duty bound to act in an impartial and objective manner. Suffice it to recall how we tried to take advantage of his appearance before us in 2021 in order to burnish the reputation of the Technical Secretariat. The only thing that was needed is honest responses to specific questions, primarily related to the report of the Fact-Finding Mission in Syria (FFMS) on the Douma incident. We had no doubts and we still have no doubts that the incident was staged, with professional actors and fabracators from the pseudo-humanitarian organization “White Helmets” being involved in it. And no one who has common sense and at least some remnants of conscience can doubt that.
And a number of inspectors do have conscience – they pointed out the falsifications contained in the FFMS’s final report on the incident in Douma and questioned some conclusions of the report. Well, these people did not wish to lie and thus violate the obligations they had assumed, although they cannot be suspected as having simpathies for Syria or Russia. And how did our Western colleagues and Mr. Arias, who serves their interests, react? Did they give them the floor? Did they organize a frank and impartial investigation in the spirit of the principles of freedom of speech that the West has championed? Nope, what they did was a shameful bullying, they tried to tarnish the reputation of tose inspectors and compromise them, so that God forbid a word of truth leak through the tangled web of lies that shrouded the Douma staging.
Then, it seemed to many that this was a one-off case, but no – this is a pattern of behavior that was previously applied to the incident with the poisoning of the Skripals in the UK in March 2018. It was also the basis for the disgusting staging in Bucha of 2022 – this incident per se has nothing to do with the CWC purview, but clearly fits into the logic of “blame it all on Russia”. What these two incidents have in common is that no elementary evidence have been provided on either of them, not a single response to our numerous questions has been given to us.
Instead of establishing the truth with regard to the Douma incident and thus restoring the undermined trust towards the true motivation and objectives behind their work on the Syrian chemical file, the Western countries proceed with fabrications, tangling their web of lies into an ever-growing massive knot. Instead of a frank and objective investigation, the OPCW illegitimately created a team of professional fabrictors – “Investigation and Identification Team” (IIT). Now the IIT is acting totally without scruple, they violate the fundamental principles of the Organization, in particular the CWC methodology for preserving the chain of custody. Thus, the IIT began to rubber-stamp reports on new investigations into incidents without even making any effort to travel to the site where those incidents occcured. Of course, as we have repeatedly stated, we categorically reject any previous and future reports by these “armchair experts”.
And how should we approach the fact that in April 2018 representatives of the United States, Britain and France, in breach of the UN Charter and international law, launched more than 100 missiles and guided bombs on targets in Syria, which were allegedly linked to that country’s chemical program. Thus, instead of sending OPCW inspectors there, who the Syrians were willing to accept, Western countries simply destroyed possible evidence single-handedly bringing in the guilty verdict and executing the sentence. Where is the logic here? Whre is any common sense?
The result of all these years of effort is somewhat obvious – the staggering level of politicization of what was once a purely technical organization, one of whose priority tasks was facilitating economic and technological development as well as assisting in building specific industrial capabilities in developing countries. Moreover, the chemical weapons prohibition regime as a whole is being challenged, and the Organization’s ability to respond to the real challenges facing the international community in the field of chemical disarmament and non-proliferation of chemical weapons is being undermined.
And in these conditions, ladies and gentlemen, you demand from us and Syrians that we cooperate and trust your new accusations and findings? At the same time, you go on with your manipulations, fabrications and egregious double standards! After all, only the blind will fail to notice the use of banned chemicals by the Kiev regime, and this is something that we have repeatedly informed the OPCW in The Hague about, as well as the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly. Instead, you are once again trying to accuse us of everything, despite the complete lack of evidence and the clear indicators that those incidents were staged, but you are still trying to pin the blame on us.
Mr. President,
Given what I have just said, I think it will be no surprise to you if I state that we will view everything that you and your satellites have said today as nothing but elements of a groundless smear campaign against Syria and Russia. We have no reason to attach any significance to these fabrications, and we categorically repudiate in advance all the accusations that you and your colleagues will levy against us. I would like to warn you right away that we also repudiate any possible reports of any new fabrications that may have been organized in the territory seized during the attack by terrorists from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham at the end of last month. We do not trust you and your colleagues, and any action in that regard will only further undermine cooperation within the framework of the CWC, with all the attendant consequences. I urge you to finally give though to this.
I thank.
Right of reply:
I listened with interest to your emotionally-charged statement. I will leave your inappropriate and undiplomatic characterizations of our statement without comment. I would only like to make a few points.
First, you have completely mendaciously presented the reason behind what is happening now in Syria, where internationally-designated terrorists attacked a sovereign state. And this happened not because the Syrian government has been failing to comply with certain resolutions, but because instead of combatting terrorism, the US is abetting it. All these years, the US has covered up and whitewashed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and now they are undertaking robust steps to requalify these thugs into some kind of rebels. We have been observing this, and we are all very much ashamed, Mr. President.
In addition, you mentioned so-called existing evidence related to the Syrian chemical program. I would like to remind you, Mr. President, that when the American side talks about some kind of evidence, the whole world recalls how one of your former Secretaries of State was waving a vial with some substance and talking about irrefutable evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
You also talked the need to punish everyone and ensure justice. I would also like to remind you that for the whole world now American-style justice is associated with the situation when the American President, who is enjoying his last months, or rather days, in power, abused his powers and “pushed through” a pardon for his criminal son, although previously everyone was sure that he would never do that. So before you deliver such hawkish statements, Mr. President, please keep in mind how it can be perceived around the world.
Thank you.