Chemical weapons inspectors are due to begin work in Syria today, 11 days after a suspected poison gas attack in the town of Douma. Syria’s UN ambassador said the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) team would be given access to the site once a UN security team had deemed it safe.
Yesterday, Syrian government-run media reported the investigators were already in Douma. It followed a string of complaints by the US and UK that Russia was blocking the team from accessing the area, which Russia denied. Moscow also gave its “guarantee” it had not tampered with the site, amid claims from France that evidence was “very likely” to be disappearing from Douma as inspectors waited in Damascus.
For its part, Russia has said Saturday’s air strikes “considerably” set back peace negotiations with the Syrian regime. Its UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told a Security Council meeting on Tuesday that after the bombings it was hard to imagine ”Syrian authorities would be interested to talk”.
He also said the US, British and French plan to put Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on trial following peace negotiations was “simply unrealistic.”
French ambassador Francois Delattre and his British counterpart Karen Pierce said the Security Council should use the strikes as an opportunity to restart UN-facilitated negotiations.
