13.10.2020, Moscow.
Granting of UN Security Council functions to Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was approved by illegitimate voting, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said on October 13 during the online presentation of Utopia of the diverse world: How history continues report at Valdai international discussion club.
He said that it was the West that grossly violated the convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons when it insisted on “illegitimate voting.” As a result, the OPCW’s Technical Secretariat was “now and forever” vested with the UN Security Council functions. The voting gave the OPCW the authority to identify those responsible in cases where chemical weapons prohibited by the convention had been used.
Previously, OPCW could only conduct investigations to establish whether chemical weapons had been used. After that, all decisions had to be made in the UN Security Council based on discussions with representatives of more countries.
“Before the West abused this universal instrument, the Technical Secretariat had the right only to establish the use or non-use of a banned substance in response to an appeal by any state which signed this convention,” Lavrov said.
Such a change was desirable for the West, because they needed a platform where they could decide who should be punished “not on the basis of international law, but on the basis of their own rules.”
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
