Russia, West clash over Syria chemical weapons sanctions

Western effort reflects a much broader effort to obtain accountability for Syrian chemical atacks and highlight claims that Assad’s govt is secretly continuing its chemical weapons programme

Syria and close ally Russia clashed with the US and other nations over a Western initiative to suspend Syria’s voting rights in the global chemical weapons watchdog for failing to provide details of three chemical attacks in 2017 that investigators blamed on President Bashar Assad’s government.

The confrontation in the UN Security Council foreshadowed a showdown when the 193 member states of the organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons meet in The Hague, Netherlands, in April to consider a French-drafted measure, on behalf of 46 countries, to suspend Syria’s “rights and privileges” in the body.

The French proposal was a response to Syria’s failure to meet a 90-day deadline set in July by the OPCW’s executive council for Damascus to declare the nerve agent sarin and chlorine, which OPCW investigators said last April were dropped by the Syrian air force on the central town of Latamneh in late March 2017.

The Western effort reflects a much broader effort to obtain accountability for Syrian chemical attacks and highlight claims that Assad’s government is secretly continuing its chemical weapons programme.