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Russian envoy says US accusations against Moscow, Damascus in OPCW are inaccurate

Alexander Shulgin underlined that the Americans were going for another vote at the review conference, but then became afraid of the result being different from what they hoped for

MOSCOW, July 19. /TASS/. The US is falsely blaming Russia and Syria for preventing the Review Conference of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons from adopting a concluding statement, Alexander Shulgin, Russia's envoy to the OPCW, said on Wednesday.

"When the Americans say that it’s the fault of Russia and Syria that the review conference ended without concluding documents, it is a big deceit, actually," said the diplomat, who is also Russian Ambassador to the Netherlands.

He said some countries, including Russia, Syria, Iran and China, were opposed to a concluding statement that "would contain a positive mention of the activities of the OPCW attribution team, which should name perpetrators of chemical weapons use."

"This team is absolutely illegitimate. We have said this many times," he said in an online news conference.

Shulgin also said most of the OPCW conference’s concluding statement had been approved.

"I dare say that 90% of the document was approved," he said.

The Russian envoy said Russia had proposed to adopt a political declaration on the 90% of the issues that had been agreed.

"The Americans arrogantly rejected this. According to our observations, they were going for another vote at the review conference, but then, having gauged the mood of the delegations at the conference, they were afraid that the result would probably not be quite what they hoped for, and considered it a good thing to leave the conference without any concluding document at all," he said.

The Fifth Special Session of the Conference of the States Parties to Review Operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention was held in The Hague from May 15 to 19. Due to disagreements on some issues, the participants were unable to adopt a final outcome document by consensus.

Tags

Foreign policy Syria United States OPCW

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