Experts should travel to Syria to investigate alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhun, Moscow says
MOSCOW. May 18 (Interfax) - Moscow is calling on the fact-finding mission probing the use of chemical weapons in Syria to travel to the site of the alleged use of prohibited substances in Khan Sheikhun, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.
"We took note of the release on May 12 of a preliminary report by the mission regarding the chemical incident in Khan Sheikhun in the Syrian province of Idlib on April 4, which with a high degree of credibility, as was written there, established the use there of toxic agent sarin or toxic substances of a similar chemical composition," Zakharova said at a briefing in Moscow on Thursday.
It is regretful that, judging by the report, the conclusions made by specialists from this organization are still based on some evidence obtained through armed opposition groups and a nongovernmental organization.
"We are convinced that without specialists from the aforementioned organization traveling to the site of the supposed chemical incident and to the Syrian Shairat air base, where the sarin, as some nations allege, had been stored before being used by the Syrian Air Force to launch a strike against Khan Sheikhun, restoring the real picture of what happened will be simply impossible," Zakharova said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry welcomes measures being made to this end by the Technical Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) with UN support, and urges the new leaders of the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism to urgently begin studying the situation on site, including the use of alternative sources of information, Zakharova said.
