The UN panel vested with the investigation on the use of chemical weapons in Syria has published the results of the limited inquiry it has been able to conduct.
The UN has established that chemical weapons were used, although in small quantities and probably masked with other chemical agents, for neither a precise chemical trace was identified, nor who used them has been ascertained without a doubt.
But on the heels of the declaration, Syria has angrily responded that the UN is acting in an unbiased way.
Russia for its part has promised to send a delegation to Syria to investigate on its own, after it too called for a more 'unbaised' report.
Syria authorities however, have denied both the UN and any other outside authority not strictly aligned with the Assad regime access to any part of the country where the chemical weapons were allegedly used.
Since the chemical weapons have been used mostly against civilians and Assad refuses to allow a proper investigation within its border, its assertion that it is innocent of the use sounds hollow. In addition, Syria's stockpile of chemical and lethal weapons, mostly developed with the aid of its allies, is well known and has been in place for decades.
There have also been reports of such use in previous civil war attempts both in the 80s and 90s.
Most of the narration received by the UN had come from refugees in camps outside the Syrian territory. More than 20 investigators effected nearly 430 interviews with the refugees.
Whether or not Assad's culpability in the use of chemical weapons is ever established, what remains a fact is that atrocities are committed almost daily in Syria by the regime. Any dictator or autocrat who slaughters civilians by the tens of thousand, tortures and executes both dissidents and insurgents has absolutely no defensibility in an argument that aims to prove its involvement in the use of lethal weapons.
OP-Ed
Source : United Nations 6.4.13
No comments:
Post a Comment