MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/. The European Union’s new anti-Syrian sanctions are unjustified and serve the interests of terrorist groups, SANA news agency said on Tuesday citing the Syrian foreign ministry.
According to the Syrian foreign ministry, the sanctions were imposed before the completion of the investigation into the incident in Khan Sheikhoun where terrorists used chemical weapons against civilians on April 4. It "reflects the imprudence of the EU officials and their insistence on supporting terrorist groups and misleading the international public opinion," the ministry said, adding that EU countries turned down Damascus’ initiative to send an expert mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to investigate the incidents in Khan Sheikhoun and al-Shairat airbase.
The ministry stressed that the Syrian government strongly condemns the European Unions’ new sanctions, which reveal Brussels policy of double standards in approaches to the present-day global crises and to global anti-terror efforts.
On Monday, foreign ministers of the European Union’s 28 member countries agreed further sanctions against Damascus and added eight Syrian top officials and eight Syrian scientists to its blacklist.
In May 2017, the European Union extended sanctions against the Syrian government for another year. This is one of the biggest sanctions packaged ever imposed by the European Union. The sanctions have been imposed in phases since 2012 and now they include a ban on imports of oil from Syria, supplies fuels and oil products to that country, restrictions on investments, a freeze of the Syrian Central Bank’s assets in the European Union, a ban on trade in dual-use technologies, as well as tools and equipment for monitoring or blocking telephone and internet traffic. Apart from that, the European Union blacklisted 255 Syrian individuals and 67 legal entities.