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Interview: UN, Syria close to agreement on probe of chemical weapons, senior official

10 April 2013 19:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The United Nations and the Syrian government are close to an agreement on the international probe of chemical weapons in Syria, a senior UN official said, APA rpoerts quoting Xinhua.

"Right now we are waiting for the final agreement with Syria, and we are very close to that," Angela Kane, UN high representative for disarmament affairs, said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Kane is currently in discussions with the Syrian government and making arrangements to deploy a mission that will investigate an allegation of chemical weapons use that Syria raised to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last month.

France and Britain followed Syria's request with a letter to Ban as well, requesting he investigates two other incidents of possible chemical weapons use.

Under a little-known UN process called the Secretary-General's Mechanism (SGM), created under a General Assembly resolution 20 years ago, Ban can appoint a team to investigate any member state's allegation of chemical weapons use at his discretion.

A small team has been assembled including Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom and officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

In response to a question of whether Syria will grant unfettered access to the investigation, Kane said, "I think we are very close to that."

"What is not going to be easy is the current security situation in the country. I have very great respect for these scientists and that they have agreed to be a part of this mission because I think it will not be without risk. It is clearly a difficult situation," said the high representative.

The SGM has no mandate to investigate who perpetrated the use of chemical weapons if there is any evidence of their use, but Kane said that if indeed chemical substances have been used, she hopes the mission will serve as a deterrent to any party using them.

"The secretary-general's concern was always keeping the population in mind, and we hope it would also serve to say that we're coming in to investigate chemical weapons use, so beware that you know we're trying to look into this, and there will also be condemnation of whoever it is that used them," she said.

Unable to speculate on what might be the effect of a report showing chemical weapons have been used, Kane said, "It's a terrible weapon. I mean any weapon is terrible but this is particularly reprehensible."