(MENAFN- Emirates News Agency (WAM))
ABU DHABI, 27th January, 2018 (WAM) -- A Dubai-based paper has said in its editorial on Saturday that for years, the Syrian regime has repeatedly denied that it has used chemical weapons against its own people, but those lies were definitively put to rest by a United Nations fact-finding commission in 2017 that directly implicated the regime in several gas attacks throughout the country's gruesome civil war. "It said Syrian President Bashar Al Assad was responsible for a deadly chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaikoun, which killing 80 civilians in April 2017."
The Gulf News added, "While it should not be surprising that the regime constantly blames the victims when such atrocities occur, it is shocking and shameful that global reaction to holding it accountable for such crimes is so lacklustre. The commission went on to say that Syrian forces have used chemical weapons more than two dozen times during the country's civil war. It went on to quote the report as saying, "Government forces continued the pattern of using chemical weapons against civilians in opposition-held areas."
In their 14th report since 2011, UN investigators said they had in all documented 33 chemical weapons attacks to date 27 of which were orchestrated by the Syrian regime. The global outrage after the first gas attack by Al Assad in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in 2013 was extremely short-lived and the world quickly forgot it. In that attack, the death toll has been put at anywhere between 300 and 1,700 including women and children. But just last week, the United States went even further than to blame the regime and said that Russia was "ultimately" responsible for the chemical weapons used by the Syrian regime.
The paper continued, "Russia, single-handedly saved the regime from complete collapse when it entered the war in 2016, reversing major territorial losses for Al Assad with its superior air power. It was also responsible for the brutal campaign against Aleppo in 2016, which devastated the city and shocked the world with its mindless cruelty. So, it goes without saying that Russia has shielded Al Assad's government from censure by the international community especially by abusing its UN veto power in the Security Council to condemn such atrocities."
"Russia should look in the mirror before bringing us to the Security Council to talk about chemical weapons," US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said last week. "Russia looked the other way when their Syrian friends used these despicable weapons of war."
"The fact that Russia, under its President Vladimir Putin, wants to take the lead in Syria negotiations to end the conflict, is laughable when it has proved time and time again that it is not an honest broker. If it wants to be successful in ending the war it got itself entangled in, the least it should do is take responsibility for the atrocities that were committed under its watchful eyes," the English language daily concluded.
WAM/Nour Salman
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