The European Union expressed support for the holding of a Special Conference of States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention to take place on 26-27 June 2018 in The Hague as it condemned the Assad regime’s repeated use of chemical weapons.
In a statement on Tuesday, the EU said that the Assad regime had “explicitly obligated itself not to possess, develop or use chemical weapons. We strongly condemn the repeated use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Armed Forces and Da’esh, as confirmed by the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM).”
The UN-backed Conference on Disarmament that was held in Geneva last month discussed the Assad regime’s repeated use of chemical weapons, stressing the importance of the establishment of a mechanism to identify those responsible for those attacks and hold them accountable.
On May 28, head of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog said that attacks involving chlorine barrel bombs and deadly nerve agent sarin in Syria have continued despite the landmark agreement that won the group a Nobel Peace Prize in 2013.
Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), has questioned whether the Assad regime declared its entire chemical weapons cache.
Most Western countries stressed that Assad’s forces are to blame for the chemical attack on the town of Douma in eastern Ghouta in on April 7, which killed at least 78 civilians and injured hundreds more.
The Syrian Coalition renewed calls for the activation of the international mechanism for the prosecution of war criminals in Syria, especially after thousands of documents indicated that widespread war crimes were committed in Syria, mostly at the hands of the Assad regime and its allies.
Participants in a conference that was held in the French capital Paris on May 18 called for holding accountable those involved in the use of chemical weapons around the world, especially in Syria. They criticized Russia for using its veto power on the UN Security Council several times to block attempts to hold the Assad regime accountable for dozens of chemical attacks against civilians.
On September 8, Britain accused the Assad regime of continuing its secret chemical weapons program despite repeated international warnings. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
