Inspectors blocked from suspect site
WASHINGTON: Inspectors from an international agency sent to collect air, water and ground samples from the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria this month were blocked yesterday by Russian and Syrian forces for security reasons, the watchdog group’s director said yesterday.
The delay in obtaining independent confirmation of suspected chemical weapons use came as the White House postponed plans to add sanctions on Russia for what the Trump administration said was its support of Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s poison gas programme.
Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, had said new sanctions would be announced yesterday, but the White House pulled back. ‘‘We are considering addi tional sanctions on Russia, and a decision will be made in the near future,’’ White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
She did not say whether Haley had misspoken or whether President Donald Trump had changed his mind to avoid worsening relations with Moscow. The Trump administration has taken an increasingly tough line on Russia even as the president has been reluctant to criticise President Vladimir Putin for his government’s meddling in the 2016 US election and other actions.
The confusion emerged as nine inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) waited in Damascus for permission to visit Duma, a suburb east of the Syrian capital that was attacked on April 7.
US officials said Assad’s forces killed more than 40 people, including children, with chlorine gas and possibly sarin, a banned nerve agent. But US intelligence has been unable to collect ironclad evidence of which chemical agents might have been used.
US and British officials have accused Russian units in Duma of trying to hide or tamper with evidence of the chemical attack, a claim Moscow denies.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations Secretarygeneral Antonio Guterres, said in New York that the OPCW team had all ‘‘necessary clearances’’ to collect samples in Duma.
But Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the OPCW, which is based in The Hague, said in a report to member states that Syrian and Russian officials had contended ‘‘there were still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take place.’’
Uzumcu expressed hope the inspectors could visit Duma ‘‘as soon as possible.’’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has repeated his government’s assertions that no chemical attack took place and said photographs and videos that showed people choking to death and other symptoms of chemical poisoning were ‘‘staged’’.
The latest evidence came with a joint warning from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the British Government, who said a new wave of Russian ‘‘cyberespionage and aggression’’ targeted governments and private companies through digital attacks on cyber infrastructure like routers and firewalls. The British Government said the warning sent a ‘‘clear message to Russia that: We know what you are doing and you will not succeed.’’ — Los Angeles Times/TCA
❛ . . . still pending security issues to be worked out before any deployment could take
place