UN, April 13. /TASS/. Sweden has prepared a new draft UN Security Council resolution on Syria, envisaging an investigative mechanism and an international mission that would look into reports of chemical stockpiles held by Damascus, the country’s UN envoy Olof Skoog said on Thursday.
He said the proposed resolution expresses support for the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission, which is currently heading to Syria to investigate claims of a chemical incident in the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus.
In addition, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will be tasked with mediating talks of UN Security Council members on creating "an impartial mechanism for attribution of guilt and responsibility and accountability" for the use of chemical weapons during the Syrian conflict.
The draft also envisages sending a "high level disarmament mission" to Syria that would "immediately just go to Syria and try to sort out all these disarmament issues once and for all and very quickly."
"They're in our draft," he said. "There will be two separate missions there's a sequence in all of this. There's the FFM [fact-finding mission], it's the attribution and it is the HL [high-level] mission on disarmament."
Fears of escalation in Syria
The Swedish diplomat said he was disappointed by the fact that the UN Security Council has again failed to agree on a chemical investigation in Syria earlier this week.
"Since then, there has been, of course, a lot of concern about the next steps that may be taken here. People are afraid, people are concerned about the escalation [in Syria] but we also have to say that we [UN Security Council members] have not done our job when it comes to coming to terms with everything that relates to the CW use in Syria," he said.
According to Skoog, in this situation Stockholm has come up with a credible "way forward" that deserves to be studied. He did not elaborate on when the draft resolution may be considered, but expressed hope that it will take place "as quickly as possible"
"We're not imposing ourselves or this," he said. "We'll see how much time is needed, but to my mind the clock is ticking and the Council needs to shoulder its responsibility, collectively."
Chemical suspicions
In September 2013, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution on the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons, while in 2014, 1,200 of chemical substances were taken out of Syria. The operation involved nine countries, including Russia.
At the same time, the OPCW, at the instigation of Western nations, suspects that the Damascus government’s declaration of its chemical weapons program, made before joining the OPCW in 2013, was not totally accurate.