Chemical weapons in Syria were produced by militants and equipment was manufactured in Western Europe, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
“The equipment, the leakage of which came out a few days ago… I would like to say that some of it is equipment that was used by militants, terrorists. It was discovered in the city of Douma,” Zakharova said at a briefing of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defense for the diplomatic corps to investigate the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
The militants’ chemical lab in Syria’s Douma has also produced high-tech explosives and had precursors of a mustard agent, chlorine, she said.
On the other hand, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that the mission to probe the fact of chemical weapons use in Syria has strongly protracted the timing of the investigation in favor of the US and their allies’ interests.
“While conducting investigations into chemical incidents in Syria, compliance with a strict sequence of actions to preserve evidence has been violated,” Maj. Igor Kirillov, chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops, said.
The Russian Defense Ministry’s representative stressed that the neglect of the OPCW standards “led to contradictions, inconsistencies and falsifications of facts in the reports on the results of investigations, which are clearly anti-Syrian in nature.”
“The United States, the United Kingdom, France and their allies are again misleading the international community and are striving for confrontation. Using staged chemical attacks they accuse Syria of violating the [Chemical Weapons] Convention, and Russia of facilitating this [violation]. Against this background, a campaign has been organized to turn the OPCW into a politicized structure that has the authority to issue strict guilty verdicts against individual states and their leaders,” Kirillov said.
He stressed that “the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission into the use of chemical weapons in Syria, which is carrying out investigations depending on the United States and its allies, plays an unenviable role here.”
According to Kirillov, the productive position of Syria and Russia, the desire for dialogue with the OPCW have been confirmed by the efforts made to provide comprehensive assistance and support to the mission to establish if chemical agents were used in Douma.
Source: Sputnik
