The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced that the Assad regime is still refusing to grant a visa to an inspector.
“The Assad regime… (is) leading the organization to refuse to deploy a team there,” OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias said.
The Assad regime did not cooperate with the OPCW team and did not declare its full stockpile of chemical weapons, which “still cannot be considered accurate and complete.”
Arias added he invited the foreign minister of the Assad regime to an in-person meeting to discuss violations of the chemical weapons embargo in Syria.
The statement came as a conference of the OPCW member states was held in the Dutch city of The Hague.
On April 21, OPCW member states stripped Syria of its OPCW voting rights after a probe blamed it for poison gas attacks in Syria’s northwestern city Idlib.
The OPCW Director-General stressed that Syria will remain stripped of its rights to vote until it has fully declared its chemical weapons and weapons-making facilities.
“To date, Syria has not implemented any of these measures,” Arias said, adding that Damascus’ statements regarding the chemical weapons “cannot always be considered accurate and complete.”
