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US boycotts world disarmament body over Syria presidency
GENEVA, June 5, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The United States said it would boycott
Tuesday’s session of the Conference on Disarmament amid fears that Syria is
using its presidency of the body to “normalise” the regime.
“Based on Syria’s repeated attempts last week to use its presidency of the
Conference on Disarmament to normalise the regime and its unacceptable and
dangerous behaviour, we are not participating in today’s session,” Robert
Wood, the US ambassador to the Geneva-based body, said in a statement.
“We will continue to defend United States’ interests” in the disarmament
body, he added.
Syria last week took over the body’s rotating, four-week presidency, which
according to a decades-old practice among its 65 member states follows the
alphabetical order of country names in English.
Wood was present during the first plenary session on Syria’s watch a week
ago, when he took the opportunity to lead a number of countries to protest
what he described as “a travesty”.
Despite the mechanical nature of Syria’s arrival at the helm of the
disarmament conference, following Switzerland and Sweden, a number of country
representatives voiced their outrage that a representative of Damascus was
presiding over the body that negotiated the chemical weapons ban.
Syria’s ambassador Hussam Edin Aala meanwhile slammed last week’s protest
as “sensational propaganda” and “characterised by double-standards.”
More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since
Syria’s civil war began in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government
protests.
After hundreds of people died in chemical attacks near Damascus in 2013, a
deal with Russia was struck to rid Syria of chemical weapons, staving off US
air strikes.
But the United Nations and Western countries have accused Damascus of
carrying out a number of chemical attacks since then.
A suspected chlorine and sarin attack in the Syrian town of Douma on April
7 this year triggered punitive missile strikes against alleged chemical
weapons sites in Syria by the US, Britain and France.
Last week, Wood had briefly walked out of the room when Edin Aala took the
floor, before returning to deliver a scathing speech.
“Today marks a sad and shameful day in the history of this body,” he told
the assembly on May 29.
He vowed at the time that throughout Syria’s presidency, the United States
would be represented “in this hall to ensure that Syria is not able to
advance initiatives that run counter to the interests of the United States.”
That was a promise the US has now backed away from. A spokeswoman for the
US mission in Geneva confirmed that no American representatives would be
present during Tuesday’s session.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1505 hrs