US fails to condemn Syrian government in OPCW

Iran's Envoy to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Kazzem Qaribabadi said that the US and other western states failed in their attempts to use the OPCW for blaming the Syrian government for the recent chemical attack which was actually waged by the terrorists.In the recent conference of the OPCW, the US and other western countries made some proposals to "conceal the existing realities about the use of chemical weapons by the terrorist groups in Syria to portray the Damascus government as the side who must be blamed", Qaribabadi said on Saturday."Many countries opposed these proposals strongly, stressing that the place for raising such discussions is the UN, specially when an inspecting team has not yet been sent (to Syria)," he added.They called on the US and other western states not to seek to make up for their failures at the UN by raising such biased proposals at the OPCW which is a technical and legal body, he said.The conference at last expressed concern over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and said using such weapons by any group and in any conditions is against the international norms and should be blamed, Qaribabadi said.Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon underlined the necessity of probe into the use of chemical weapons by terrorists against the people in Syria, calling it a "dreadful and unacceptable crime".Ban Ki-moon made the remarks in a letter to Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi who had sent him a letter in March to ask for a UN probe into the case. Salehi's letter was released as a UN document later."We have announced many times that using chemical weapons is a dreadful and unacceptable crime," Ban said in his letter on Monday.He said that the main goal of investigation into the case of the chemical weapons in Syria is understanding the realities and presenting a report to the member states, and expressed the hope that probing the case would send a strong message in support of the international ban on the use of chemical weapons and "reinvigorate our joint efforts for a permanent ban on the use of these weapons".In March, terrorists fired a rocket containing chemical substances in the Khan al-Assal area of rural Aleppo and reports indicated that around 25 people were killed, most of them civilians.After that Syria asked for an independent investigation into the use of chemical weapons by militants in Aleppo.Later, Ban Ki-moon announced the decision for conducting an independent investigation into the terrorist chemical attack."I have decided to conduct a United Nations investigation into the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria," Ban told reporters in his office, adding that "I intend for this investigation to start as soon as practically possible."The chemical attack came after a video footage posted on the internet late in January showed that the armed militants in Syria possessed canisters containing chemical substances.The foreign-sponsored militants had earlier released footage in which rabbits were killed by inhaling poisonous gas.