Showdown as West seeks to boost powers of OPCW
THE HAGUE: Britain and its allies were squaring off against Russia yesterday in a high-stakes diplomatic drive to give the world’s global chemical watchdog the power to identify those behind toxic arms attacks.
The meeting opened in The Hague as inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons ( OPCW) are also expected to unveil soon a long- awaited report into an alleged sarin and chlorine gas attack in April in the Syrian town of Douma.
Medics and rescuers say 40 people were killed.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was to head up his country’s delegation to a rare special session of the OPCW’s top policy-making body, and was due to address the session later in the day.
“We want to strengthen the Organisation entrusted with overseeing the ban on chemical weapons,” the British delegation said in a tweet.
“We want to empower the @ OPCW to identify those responsible for chemical weapons attacks.”
London called the talks of the OPCW’s state party members in the wake of the nerve agent attack on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English town of Salisbury, which Britain and its allies have blamed on Russia.
There has however been growing international concern about repeated allegations of the use of poison gases in the Iraq and Syria conflicts, compounded by the 2017 assassination of the North Korean leader’s halfbrother in a rare nerve agent attack in Kuala Lumpur airport blamed on Pyongyang.
It is feared that although deadly chemical weapons were once largely shunned as taboo after decimating forces during World War I, their use is once again becoming gradually normalised in the absence of any effective way of holding perpetrators to account.
Opening the session, the conference chairman, Abdelouahab Bellouki, said, those responsible for chemical weapons attacks “need to be punished on the basis of true and strong evidence”.
“Inspiteofdifferentanddivergent positions and opinions, we are all committed to constructive cooperation in order to rid once and for all the world of chemical weapons.”
Tensions already ran high early yesterday, and the talks will move behind closed doors on Wednesday and possibly linger on until Thursday for a key vote on the British draft decision.
It is only the fourth time in the body’s history that such a special session has been convened.