The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has changed its mandate to get past Russia’s veto at the UN Security Council, transferring some of its functions to OPCW, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin stated during Wednesday’s briefing.
“Our Western partners are forcing this mission with tenacity that would be better applied elsewhere. It is clear why they do this – they want to bypass Russia’s veto in New York,” he said.
“By offering functions not pertinent to the technical organization, they aim to remove some of the UN Security Council’s functions and mechanically transfer them here, to the OPCW,” the diplomat added.
Shulgin called the attempts to hand over the powers of the UN Security Council to the OPCW “complete nonsense”. “There is nothing in the convention [on the prohibition of chemical weapons] that allows the OPCW to take on these functions,” he stated.
Earlier on Wednesday, the OPCW accepted the British project on changing its mandate, which allows the organization to have prosecutorial functions. According to UK’s Permanent Representative to the OPCW Peter Wilson, the organization approved the document with 82 votes for and 24 votes against.
The document, published earlier on the UK Delegation to OPCW’s Twitter page, states that the organization supports the decision on developing mechanisms of identifying those using chemical weapons in Syria by eliciting information of their origin, including the cases when neither the UN, nor the OPCW have prepared a corresponding report on the occurrence.