Moscow : Russia on Friday criticised the world’s chemical weapons watchdog for not sending experts to the site of an alleged chemical attack in Syria, backing up President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. “We consider it unacceptable to analyse events from a distance,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow with his counterparts from Syria and Iran. Lavrov said Assad’s opponents had “in essence” given guarantees for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to visit the location where at least 87 people died, but the watchdog was refusing to send them.
“They say still that it is not very safe, but they cannot put forward convincing arguments,” Russia’s top diplomat said. Russia has rejected accusations from the West that its Assad’s forces were responsible for a chemical attack and has lashed out at the US for its cruise missile strikes last week against a Syrian air base.
The OPCW said on Thursday that a fact-finding mission was analysing samples gathered from “various sources” and that allegations a chemical attack took place in the Syrian rebel- held town of Khan Sheikhun were ‘credible’.–AFP
