NEW YORK, November 19 (Sputnik) – Russia has proposed a draft Security Council Presidential Statement on the use of chemical weapons in the Middle East, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said Wednesday.
The statement comes in the wake of numerous reports about chemical weapons use by radical groups in Iraq and Syria and the Russian delegation is to “send a serious signal to all regional powers that the use of chemical weapons by anyone will not be left unanswered,” the Russian diplomat said.
However, other Security Council members suggested shifting the focus from radical Islamist groups to the Syrian chemical weapons program, Churkin said.
“In a situation when terrorists continue to improve their skills of production and use of chemical weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction, double standards are inadmissible and may be harmful,” the Russian diplomat said.
The issue of the use of chemical weapons in the Middle East has been widely discussed and has been the focus of special attention after an unprecedented September 2013 chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, that killed almost 1500 civilians triggering worldwide condemnation and sparking talks of a US-led military intervention.
After the incident, Syria agreed to place its chemical weapons under international control for further elimination in September 2013. In late October, the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced that a total of 97.8 percent of chemicals removed from Syria earlier this year had been destroyed.
