WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday censured 18 senior officials of the Syrian government and imposed sanctions on a Syrian organisation, over its use of chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction.
This is the first time the United States has sanctioned specific Syrian officials in connection with Syria’s alleged violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and a UN Security Council resolution prohibiting chemical weapons.
The sanctions also referred to recent reports by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism, alleging the Syrian government had used chlorine as chemical weapon in 2014 and 2015. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
The use of chemicals weapons “demonstrate [the Assad government’s] willingness to defy basic standards of human decency, its international obligations and longstanding global norms,” he said.
Syria agreed to join the Chemical Weapons Convention after an alleged sarin chemical attack on Syrian civilians in the Ghouta area of Damascus on Aug 21, 2013, which killed more than a thousand people, many of them children, the White House official added.
In a separate statement, the US State Department announced sanctions on a Syrian entity, which, it claimed, was involved in making ballistic missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The announcement referred to a June 26, 2012 address of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in which he identified the sanctioned entity — Organisation for Technological Industries (OTI) — as an agency of the Syrian Ministry of Defence.
The State Department claimed that OTI’s primary mission was to import advanced strategic technologies for surface-to-surface missile and surface-to-surface rocket programmes in Syria.
OTI is also involved in furthering Syria’s WMD-capable ballistic missile programme, it added.
Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2017
