The United States: Russia obstructs efforts to hold the Assad regime to account

The US permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, said yesterday, “Russia continues to defend the Assad regime without reservation, publishes misleading information, and impedes the efforts of countries to hold the Assad regime accountable for its use of chemical weapons.”

This came in the monthly UN Security Council session on the chemical weapons program in Syria
Greenfield added: “This week, we remember two tragic chemical weapons attacks in Syria: the first occurred on April 4, 2017, when the Assad regime attacked Khan Sheikhoun town in Idlib governorate, which led to the killing of Syrian children, women and men.”
“And the second occurred one year later, specifically on April 7, 2018, in the city of Douma, when the Assad regime once again used these horrific banned weapons against innocent people.”

“Because of the irresponsible and dangerous Russian empowerment, the Assad regime continues to blatantly ignore our calls for full disclosure and verifiable destruction of its chemical weapons programs,” the American delegate said.
She noted that “the women and children of Syria are waiting, and they know that the Security Council has the power to hold the Assad regime accountable, so let us move and show them that we deserve the responsibility that we assume.”

And Russia threatened, according to Dmitry Poliansky, Russia’s deputy delegate to the Security Council, that the Assad regime might stop its cooperation with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons if a proposal from Western countries to limit Damascus’s rights in the organization was accepted.

Source: Agencies