Photo: Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire
In a meeting today on the alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syrian Province of Idlib, United States ambassador Nikki Haley said, “When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”
Holding pictures of children who were victim to the alleged attack, Haley said the attack left “rows of lifeless bodies, some still in diapers, some with visible scars of a chemical weapons attack.” She said the Security Council could not close its eyes to those pictures or their “minds of the responsibility to act.” She said the Council views itself as a defender of peace, security, and human rights but would not deserve this description if it failed to act.
Media reports indicated that a chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykhun in Idlib. The attack may have caused the deaths of 70 civilians, with perhaps 200 injured. Haley said, “The truth is that Assad, Russia, and Iran have no interest in peace.” She described the Syrian government as “illegitimate” which is “led by a man with no conscience.”
Russian ambassador Vladimir Safronkov wondered why strange things happened whenever there was advancement in both the Geneva and Astana talks. He said the Syrian government has requested that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons send a mission to the alleged attack site to conduct an investigation. Safronkov stressed that the Syrian air force had conducted an airstrike on a weapons warehouse where chemical weapons were being produced to be used in Iraq and Aleppo, adding that the problem of chemical terrorism persisted.
The Russian ambassador said terrorists and extremists had used chemical weapons before to create a pretext for the use of force against a sovereign State, Syria. He said previous videos had been staged by NGOs connected to the opposition adding that “the same actors” could be seen in the videos. He said organizations like the White Helmets “seem to be closely linked to these terrorist organizations” and asked if “these video materials should serve as a basis for us to draw conclusions.”
Safronkov said his government did not see a need for a new resolution everything being done by the American-British-French alliance was “guided by the need for regime change”. He stressed that the “obsession with regime change is what hinders the work of the Security Council” and the Western countries were trying to have the Security Council “give cover of legitimacy to your illegitimate plans.”
Syrian Deputy Permanent Representative Mounzer Mounzer said his country was subject to two aggressions; one from the some Security Council members and another from terrorists acting on their behalf. He said some Members of the Council were lying about chemical weapons attacks in Syria as they did with the weapons of mass destruction pretext to invade Iraq.
Mouzer stressed that his government did not have any chemical weapons and had never, and will never, use them against its own population. He said the Syrian Government condemns “the crime of using chemical weapons, or any other type of weapons of mass destruction, by anyone, anywhere, under any circumstance, and for any reason; and considers it a crime against humanity and a rejected and immoral act which cannot be justified under any circumstance.”