THE HAGUE, November 19. /TASS/. Russia is against additional inspections in Syria to verify destruction of chemical weapons, Russian Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Georgy Kalamanov, who leads the Russian delegation to the 23rd conference of member states of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), said on Monday.
"Syria has destroyed all of its chemical weapons arsenals under total control of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and has been under permanent control of the organization ever since," he said. "We believe that the return to the past and reinstatement of inspections will mean violation of the Convention. It is no way corresponds to the spirit and the letter of the Convention."
OPCW Director General Fernando Arias said earlier that the organization is forming an attributive mechanism to identify those responsible for the use of chemical weapons. The team is to begin its work in February 2019. First, it will focus on Syria, with its mandate being linked to the fact-finding mission. It means that OPCW experts will be authorized to probe into possible chemical attacks in Syria after 2014.
The decision to vest the OPCW Secretariat with attributive authority, or the right to identify those responsible for the use of chemical weapons, was taken at a special session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in late June.
The Russia side has repeatedly objected against making a "punitive body" of the OPCW. According to the Russian side, once the OPCW is authorized to identify those to blame for the use of chemical weapons it will mean infringement upon the exclusive domain of the United Nations Security Council and it is not envisaged by the Chemical Weapons Convention. More to it, due to the specifics of the voting procedure, the decision was taken by a minority, with only 82 out of the 193 member nations casting their votes for it (this much turned out to be enough as the votes of those abstaining were not taken into account).