The resolution was finalised in a one-on-one meeting between Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, in Malaysia, where Kerry was attending meetings as part of a regional forum. The U.S. has been pressing the Security Council to ensure accountability for an increasing number of alleged chlorine attacks.
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While Russian Federation and the United States have failed to agree on a way to end the Syrian conflict, now in its fifth year, they have agreed on eliminating the country’s chemical weapons.
The draft decision fills a niche in assigning blame for chemical weapon assaults so the perpetrators could be delivered to justice.
The United Nations has said that some 250,000 people have been killed and an estimated 7.6 million are internally displaced.
There have been subsequent attacks in Syria involving chlorine gas, which is not on the list of banned chemicals because of its permitted industrial uses.
The investigative body would identify those who are “perpetrators, organizers, sponsors or otherwise involved in the use of chemicals as weapons, including chlorine or any other toxic chemical” in Syria, in instances where an OPCW fact-finding mission determines that an incident involved, or likely involved, their use. Russia, like the United States, wields a UN Security Council veto. In March, the council approved a U.S.-drafted resolution that threatens measures, including sanctions, over the use of toxic chemicals as weapons in Syria. In early June, Syrian activists and doctors said chlorine had been increasingly used as a weapon.
Kerry told journalists Thursday that he and Lavrov had worked out the draft resolution to put before the Security Council that would “create a process of accountability, which has been missing”.
“We have decided to go but a date has not yet been fixed”, for what would be the group’s first mission to Russian Federation since February 2014, when the coalition was led by Ahmad Jarba, he said.
In addition to the five permanent member states on the U.N. Security Council – the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France – the 15-nation body includes rotating member states Angola, Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Spain and Venezuela. Syria’s declared stockpile of 1,300 metric tons of chemical compounds has been destroyed, however the OPCW is investigating attainable undeclared chemical weapons.
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Many critics believe that allowing Syria to remain in possession of Chlorine gives them the rudimentary ability to create more weapons of mass destruction, according to the New York Times.
