MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia on Sunday criticized what it said were Western attempts to use a Syrian chemical arms disarmament deal to seek a U.N. resolution threatening force against President Bashar al-Assad’s government….
Tag: Syria
Claims made in a US army report relating to sarin use in Syria appear to have irritated Turkish PM Erdoğan, who is supporting pro-Islamist organizations such as al-Nusra and al-Qaeda. Former intelligence officer and one of the…
Human Rights Watch and the New York Times are trying to implicate the Syrian Arab Army in a chemical incident that happened on August 21 in Ghouta near Damascus. Using the report of an United…
Each expert has his own assessment of Washington’s maneuvers around Syria and his own understanding of the aims of these maneuvers. There are as many understandings of the war being waged against Syria…
The UN in Geneva has released its long-awaited report on the use of chemical weapons in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August 21.The UN concluded: 1. Sarin gas was used in the attack. 2. The attack used at least two surface-to-surface rockets 3. One of the warheads containing sarin held 56 liters of the deadly chemical. The UN report did not assign blame for the attack nor was assigning blame in the charter of the team of forensic investigators. However, France and the United States immediately used the report to blame Syria for the attack. Cited as evidence were the two rockets used: an M14 artillery rocket with Cyrillic markings and a 330-millimeter rocket of unknown origin. The UN report stated that the evidence found in rebel-controlled territory outside of Damascus could have been manipulated by the rebels or forces allied with the rebels.
Nazareth. President Barack Obama may have drawn his seemingly regretted “red line” around Syria’s chemical weapons, but it was neither he nor the international community that turned the spotlight on their use. That…
As pressure mounts over possible military intervention in Syria by Western forces, it is important to contextualize this conflict geographically, politically and historically within the tensions that have been building up in this region, and…
Instead of a non-politicized investigation and lab analysis, the UN investigation of alleged nerve-gas attacks inside Syria was led by Professor Ake Sellstrom, a man of mystery who keeps a veil of secrecy around his research and political-military relationships. Sellstrom’s report on Syria for the UN and his prior inspections record in Iraq are dubious, to say the least. In the eyes of laymen, his seeming objectivity and non-partisanship is based on the myth of Sweden’s neutrality. The public assumes – wrongly- that Sweden never takes sides in wars or geopolitical conflicts. Fraud of Neutrality This cosmetic veneer of Swedish neutrality has been deftly exploited by Israel and NATO to perpetrate falsehoods throughout Sellstrom’s work for the UN, including denial of the chemical-and-biological causes for “Gulf War Syndrome” and the shipments of U.S. chemical weapons to the Saddam Hussein regime.
Syria and key ally Russia joined forces on Wednesday against any Western-backed United Nations resolution that would allow military action, as Moscow accused UN chemical weapons inspectors of bias. The United States, meanwhile, said it will maintain the threat of force if Damascus fails to abide by an accord to surrender its chemical arsenal, and the United Nations hit back at the Russian accusations. Moscow came out swinging, saying Damascus had delivered new proof implicating rebels in an August 21 sarin gas attack near the capital that killed hundreds, while slamming a UN report into the incident.
On September 15, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said his government “views with great seriousness the Russian-US deal.” It intends to observe it to the letter, he stressed. It’s “committing itself to whatever comes from the UN….