US Sanctions Aim to 'Substitute or Cancel' Idlib Investigation, Russian MP Says

The government of the United States is trying to distract the international community from the necessity of thorough investigation of an alleged chemical attack in the Syrian province of Idlib by sanctioning the Syrian scientists, according to Konstantin Kosachev, the chair of the Russian upper house of parliament Foreign Affairs Committee.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Monday, the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 271 employees of Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Center, which is suspected by the US authorities of being responsible for producing chemical weapons.

“Once again we see how the sanctions are being used not as an instrument to achieve a real goal, but as a demonstration of a theatrical decisiveness, an effort to substitute or cancel the investigation by the very fact of punishment for an ostensible evidence of guilt,” Kosachev told the reporters.

On April 4, the reported chemical weapons incident in Syria’s Idlib province claimed the lives of some 80 people and inflicted harm on an additional 200 civilians. The Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, as well as a number of Western states, accused the Syrian government troops of carrying out the attack, while Damascus has refuted these allegations, saying it did not possess chemical weapons.

Russia and Iran offered to launch an independent investigation into the incident but last week, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) turned down the proposal. On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called this decision strange as the Russian-Iranian initiative did not stipulate anything other than conducting "an independent, impartial, transparent investigation" with experts visiting the site.