UN, June 28. /TASS/. The office of the UN Secretary General said on Tuesday it would not comment on Washington's reports of a chemical attack allegedly being prepared by the Damascus government in Syria.
When asked by a reporter to comment on the rumors, UN Secretary General spokesman Stephane Dujarric said he was "not going to comment on hypotheticals."
"We've seen the reports of threats and tweets and so forth. We're not going to comment on things that have yet to happen," he said.
He reiterated the UN stance that "any use of chemical weapons is to be condemned in the strongest possible terms," adding that any chemical attack needs to be fully investigated, as it constitutes a breach of the international law.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a written statement on Monday that the US government saw "potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack" in Syria by the authorities in Damascus. Syria’s national reconciliation minister, Ali Haidar, was quoted as sayinh by Associated Press on Tuesday that those accusations were a part of a "diplomatic battle" waged against his country.
Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, who heads the International Affairs Committee of the Russian parliament’s lower house, said those reports were nothing more than provocations that will weigh on Washington’s conscience.
Diplomats from Western member states of the UN Security Council also refused to comment on the reports, saying only that any use of chemical weapons was inadmissible.