The Russian Foreign Ministry has responded to the White House’s accusations of Moscow trying to get rid of a UN-OPCW body researching the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has called the US stance unacceptable.
Earlier Moscow has blocked a US-drafted UN Security Council resolution to renew the panel’s mandate before it concluded the seventh report on the 2017 attack in the village of Khan Shaykhun and the 2016 incident in Um-Housh.
Two days later the UN-Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Joint Investigative Mechanism (OPCW-UN JIM) has released its findings. which claimed that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack and deaths of more than 80 people. Its mandate expires on November 17.
The Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations criticized the report, saying that it reminds more an amateur document and was based mostly on assumptions and the selective use of facts.
The US was going to appeal to the UN to renew the JIM’s mandate and consequently blaming countries which ‘fail to support work’ of the body, calling it a direct opposition of international standards.
Thus Russia has come in for flak after Russian envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia had said that the fate of the independent body, which was established by a unanimous UN Security Council vote, would be decided in due time once it was determined that the investigation was being conducted in a professional manner.