Chemical weapons watchdog votes to suspend Syria’s rights
Watchdog voted to strip Syria of its rights in an unprecedented step ater a probe blamed Damascus for poison gas atacks; Assad to run for re-election in May; Syria’s Idlib to get first batch of COVID-19 vaccines
Member states of the global chemical weapons watchdog voted on Wednesday to strip Syria of its rights at the organisation in an unprecedented step ater a probe blamed Damascus for poison gas atacks.
A motion backed by countries including France, Britain and the United States to suspend Syria’s “rights and privileges” obtained the required two-thirds majority in the vote at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
“In light of this result the drat resolution is adopted,” said Jose Antonio Zabalgoitia Trejo, the chairman of the meeting of the OPCW’S member states who had gathered at its headquarters in The Hague.
Eighty-seven countries voted in favour of the motion, 15 including Syria, Russia, China and Iran voted against, and 34 abstained, OPCW officials said. A total of 136 out of the agency’s 193 member states voted.
The measures are in response to an OPCW investigation last year that found the Syrian air force had used the nerve agent sarin and chlorine gas in three atacks on the village of Latamenah in 2017.
The motion said the OPCW “decides, ater careful review, and without prejudice to the Syrian Arab Republic’s obligations under the (Chemical Weapons) Convention, to suspend the following rights and privileges.”
These include the right to vote in either the annual conference of all member states or the OPCW’S executive council, to stand for election in the executive council, or to hold any office in the agency, it said.
Syrian President Bashar al-assad on Wednesday submited documents to run for a third term in an election scheduled for May 26, parliament’s speaker said on state media.
Parliament announced the election on Sunday. Washington and the Syrian opposition have denounced it as a farce designed to cement Assad’s authoritarian rule.
Assad’s family and his Baath party have ruled Syria for five decades with the help of the security forces and the army, where his Alawite minority dominate.
This year is the 10th anniversary of a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters which triggered a civil war that has let much of Syria in ruins.
The multi-sided conflict has sucked in world powers, killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions more, but is now nearing its end with Assad, supported by Russian and Iranian allies, back in control of most of the country.
Candidates must have lived in Syria for the last 10 years, which prevents opposition figures in exile from standing.
A first batch of Covid-19 vaccine doses was expected to arrive Wednesday in war-torn northwestern Syria, where millions of people live in dire humanitarian conditions, a UN official said.
The 53,800 doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine were dispatched to the rebel-dominated region as part of the Covax facility, which ensures the world’s poorest economies get access to jabs for free.
“Once the vaccines arrive, we are prepared to start vaccination to priority groups through our implementing partners,” said Mahmoud Daher, a senior official with the UN’S World
Health organisation ( WHO).
The delivery will be the first to Syria as part of the Covax programme, which has already sent vaccine doses to more than 100 different territories worldwide.
The vaccine doses are intended for the extended northwestern Syrian region, which includes the extremist-dominated Idlib enclave.
The first categories of people to be vaccinated in the coming days in the Idlib region will be medical personnel involved in the batle against the pandemic and first aid responders.
The next group will be people above the age of 60, followed by people from younger age groups with chronic diseases, said Daher, who is based in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.
Much of the Idlib enclave is controlled by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, an extremist organisation that includes ex-members of Syria’s former Al Qaeda franchise.
Other regions of Syria will also receive vaccine doses through Covax, under which 92 countries are eligible.