UK and France refuse to attend Russian-initiated briefing at OPCW
The Permanent Representative of Great Britain to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Peter Wilson said that the briefing initiated by Russia at the OPCW headquarters in The Hague on Thursday, April 26 was a “stunt.” The Russians claim that the event, which was attended by several residents of the Syrian city of the Douma, proves the absence of any chemical attacks in the vicinity of the city.
The United Kingdom and its allies declined to attend this briefing. The OPCW headquarters "is not a theater," Wilson stressed. He regarded the actions of the Russian Federation as an "attempt to undermine the OPCW’s work," particularly the work of its Fact Finding Mission investigating chemical weapons use in Syria.
According to Wilson, experts of the Fact Finding Mission should work with any witnesses of a possible chemical attack. Earlier, the OPCW leadership called on Russia and Syria to work with the Mission but the call was ignored, the statement said.
In turn, the ambassador of France to the Netherlands, Philippe Lalliot, called the briefing "an obscene masquerade." In his opinion, the Assad regime has "massacred and gassed its own people for the last seven years."
According to humanitarian organizations, on the night of April 7, a helicopter dropped a barrel bomb full of chemicals over the Syrian city of Douma. The majority of the affected civilians are women and children, activists note. According to the World Health Organization, at least 70 people died and more than 500 people went to hospitals. On April 21 and 25, OPCW experts collected samples from Douma that would be sent to accredited laboratories for analysis.