Russia on UN inspectors

Russia: UN inspectors ignored evidence on Syria chemical attacks

RT,

19 September, 2013

UN inspectors ignored evidence on chemical weapons use in Syria secretly passed to them by Damascus, said Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister in an exclusive interview to RT. That is why the UN report is biased and needs reinvestigation, he said.

“The Syrian authorities have conducted their own sampling and investigation, analysis in terms of possible evidence of the rebels being responsible for the tragic episodes both on August 21, but beyond that also on August 22, 23 and 24,” Sergey Ryabkov told RT's Maria Finoshina, who caught up with him during his visit to Damascus to discuss these allegations.

Ryabkov revealed that there were actually several chemical attacks in Syria in August and that the UN inspectors, headed by Swedish scientist Dr. Ake Salstrom, were informed about this, but ignored the information in their report.

“This material was discreetly handed over to Ake Salstrom, the head of the UN mission of experts here [in Syria] which came to investigate the Ghouta incidents. Salstrom was asked to look into it and eventually factor this new evidence into the final report. It never happened in fact,” Ryabkov told RT. “This is one of the reasons why we criticize the speed with which the report was released… and also an incomplete content of this report,” he said.

Moscow wants the UN inspectors to return to Syria and continue investigating in order to determine who was responsible for the chemical attack.

“We expect the UN Secretariat to both send Salstrom and his people back to Syria to continue investigation of the three remaining incidents, and also to write a full and comprehensive report against the background of all information they have received,” Ryabkov stressed.

He warned against the evidence provided by the Syrian and Russian sides being “simply nullified and disregarded.”

So far, Rybkov said, “one of the few areas” where the UN mission “kept its word” is that it only announced that chemical weapons were used without specifying who deployed them.

Ryabkov called on to the UN inspectors to follow the approach of the Russian expert analysis of the chemical attack that took place in Syria on March 19, which was professional and contained chemical, biological and medical analysis of the incident.

The Russian deputy FM maintained that during his two-day visit to Damascus a great job has been done as Syrian authorities are firmly set to fully fulfill all the obligations, and first of all to provide information about the complete list of chemical weapons they possess by the end of this week.