MOSCOW, September 28 (RIA Novosti) – The US-based Human Rights Watch organization criticized Saturday the UN Security Council resolution requiring Syria to eliminate its chemical weapon stockpiles saying it has failed to deliver justice for the conflict's victims.
“Any progress to remove Syria’s chemical weapons is an important step, but this resolution fails to ensure justice for the gassing of hundreds of children and many other grave crimes,” said the UN Director at Human Rights Watch, Philippe Bolopion.
Human Rights Watch has blamed Syria’s regime for the alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus on August 21, in which it said 1,400 people, including over 400 children, were killed.
Bolopion called on the Security Council members to “overcome their political differences and make clear to all sides that they must not stand in the way of delivering life-saving aid to civilians, or they will be held accountable.”
“If the killing of civilians by conventional weapons continues unabated, the chemical weapons resolution will be remembered as an effort to draw red lines, not save civilian lives,” Bolopion said.
The UN Security Council voted unanimously late Friday to pass the resolution that will ensure that the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons program “happens as soon as possible and with the utmost transparency and accountability," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry described the resolution, which does not authorize the automatic use of force if Syria is said to be in violation, as a "strong, enforceable, precedent-setting" document which shows that “diplomacy can be so powerful that it can peacefully defuse the worst weapons of war."
