A draft resolution presented to the 15-member council calls on United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to present recommendations within 15 days on the “Joint Investigative Mechanism” that would undertake the probe. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because the draft hasn’t been released publicly.
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He also expressed concern over the ongoing ambiguity attached to the Syrian Chemical Programme and the fate of a few Syrian Chemical weapons, especially before the Syrian regime acceding to the Convention to Ban Chemical weapons and the full responsibility of the Syrian regime to practically prove the denial of this ambiguity, in order to be assured that there are no remainder of any Chemical weapons in its inventories.
Discussions on the text were to begin next week and it remained unclear when the draft resolution would be put to a vote in the council. The OPCW is not mandated to lay blame.
The United States on Thursday asked the United Nations Security Council to set up an investigative panel to identify those behind deadly chlorine gas attacks in Syria.
The Syrian government denies it has ever used chemical weapons in Syria, including chlorine. The Security Council has already threatened consequences for such attacks, which could include sanctions.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the global Chemical Weapons watchdog based in The Hague, Netherlands, has a mandate to carry out fact-finding missions and has condemned the use of chlorine in Syria as a breach of worldwide law.
Russian Federation is an ally of Syria and has protected President Bashar al-Assad from council action during the four-year civil war.
The United Nations has said that a few 220,000 people have been killed and an estimated 7.6 million are internally displaced.
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“Myanmar is committed to fulfilling its obligations under the convention and looks forward to cooperating with other states parties to bring about a world completely free of chemical weapons”, Myanmar’s Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin said in a statement.
