Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)

UNSC Watch: Now in Security Council, India Gets a Taste of Polarised Division in an Open Debate

A weekly analysis on UN Security Council proceedings as India begins its two-year tenure at the body.

New Delhi: Even as UN security council members prepare for a debate this week on combatting terrorism, the polarisation between the permanent members remains stark as evident from the tense discussion on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

The calendar for the security council opened with a closed meeting to consider the programme of work for the next month. The debate on Syria – the first open discussion of the UNSC in 2021 – showcased the extreme positions among the P-5, if a reminder was even needed.

It was also the first open debate attended by the newly-inducted non-permanent members – India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway. They are replacing five other countries – Belgium, Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa – whose term had ended on December 31, 2020.

While this is India’s eight stint as a non-permanent member, the working methods of the council have changed drastically since the last time due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with most meetings taking place through video and votes signed in through e-mail.

The open videoconference on January 5 began with the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu, reiterating the findings of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) which said that the international community cannot yet have confidence that Syria’s chemical weapons programme had been destroyed.

In 2013, the UNSC had passed a resolution calling for full destruction of Syrian chemical weapons, which required a monthly briefing on its implementation. The lines are drawn sharply between the US and Europe versus Russia and China – with the OPCW’s credibility being put on the mat by opposing factions.

Among the new entrants, Norway and Ireland expressed their confidence in OPCW. Mexico, which is going to assume the presidency of the next Conference of State Parties of OPCW, asserted confidence in the “professionalism” of the UN body but called on nations not to let Syria’s chemical weapons issue polarise proceedings in UN.

Also read: India to Chair UNSC’s Taliban and Libya Sanctions Committees, Panel on Counter-Terrorism

Kenya described Syria as a “victim and a symbol of a global order under immense strain from unilateralism, power politics and wars without limit”.

In its statement, India “appreciated the commitment” of OPCW technical secretariat. At the same time, it called for “continued engagement” between Syria and OPCW and that concerns had to addressed by consultation between all “concerned parties. “In our view, the politicisation of the issue is neither helpful nor productive”.

While Syria has always been at the centre of a geopolitical tug of war, OPCW’s role has become even more complicated after it became the battleground on blame game over the alleged poisoning of a former Russian double agent by a nerve agent in 2018.

India had preferred to keep strictly on the sidelines of the issue, but had also not been in favour of expanding the powers of the UN global chemical weapons watchdog.

Last week’s other open meeting was a debate on international peace and security challenges of maintaining peace and security in a fragile context, especially in Africa. As the Security Council president in January, Tunisia had the right to propose signature debates on themes aligned to its foreign policy priorities.

The United Nations Headquarters. Photo: Reuters/Carlo Allegri /File

Usually, these events are chaired by the top leadership from the country holding the presidency. The Tunisian president, Kaïs Saïed, opened the virtual debate on January 6. From India, foreign secretary Harsh Shringla joined the discussions remotely.

The second open debate, proposed by Tunisia, will be on Tuesday (January 12) on international cooperation in combatting terrorism. It will mark 20 years of the adoption of UNSC resolution 1373, which was passed after 9/11 terror attacks.

Tunisia is also the chair of the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), which had been created under this resolution. India is scheduled to chair this UNSC panel in 2022.

Next week, the other meetings on the Council’s agenda next week are briefings from the UN offices in West Africa and Central Asia, UN special envoy to Yemen and peacekeeping missions to Mali and Cyprus.

One of the announcements made in the first week of January was to fill in the vacancies in the security council’s subsidiary organisations due to the annual turnover among non-permanent members.

Also read: Virtual Meets, a China Problem, Domestic Issues: 2020’s Highlight Reel for Indian Diplomacy

India will chair two committees that overlook the implementation of resolutions on sanctions related to Afghanistan and Libya.

Among its varied mandate, the Taliban sanctions committee has the right to designate and delist individuals and entities to be targeted by a sanction regime made up of asset freeze and travel ban.

India’s chairing of the Taliban sanctions committee takes place at a crucial time when the intra-Afghan peace talks between the Afghanistan government and Kabul have resumed in Doha.

As chair of the committee, India will have an increased profile in the peace talks, but diplomatic sources also noted that strict guidelines govern the panel’s conduct. These rules do not allow the chair to have much leeway to take any unilateral steps, since all decisions are taken on a consensual basis.

While non-permanent members can be chairs of the UNSC committees, permanent members continue to have a more dominant role, as they account for the majority of the ‘penholders’. This term is given to a country who takes leadership in drafting decisions and coordinating negotiations on a certain geographical situation or thematic subject.

The ‘penholdership’ system of burden-sharing evolved as the agenda of the council expanded exponentially over the last two decade. However, it is an informal system, so there is no official document to show which country is the ‘penholder’ for which subject. However, the current penholder for a topic is usually guessed when a particular country takes the lead in drafting proposals.

Among themselves, the US, United Kingdom and France hold the ‘penholder’ for most of the critical issues active on the council’s agenda. Russia and China have preferred to work behind the scenes. However, Russia and the US are ‘co-penholders’ for the peacekeeping mission in the Golan heights. The argument was that the two countries with the most polarised position should be first talking to sort out kinks before bringing draft proposals to the council.

Also read: India Welcomes Reconciliation, Rapprochement Among Countries in Gulf Region

In specific topics, the ‘penholder’ has a more influential role than the committee chairman on the subject. For example, as chairman of the Taliban sanctions committee, India would have inputs on issues related to Afghanistan. Still, the lead on outcomes would be taken by the ‘co-penholder’ for this country, Estonia and Norway.

Scores Poisoned in Aleppo Gas Attack, Syria and Russia Blame Rebels

A health official in Aleppo said victims suffered breathing difficulties, eye inflammation and other symptoms suggesting the use of chlorine gas. Rebel officials denied the allegations and said their forces did not possess chemical weapons.

Beirut: More than 100 people were wounded in Syria’s Aleppo late on Saturday in a suspected toxic gas attack which the government and its ally, Russia, blamed on insurgents.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its warplanes bombed militants in the insurgent stronghold of Idlib who it accused of firing poison gas at Aleppo.

Major-General Igor Konashenkov said Moscow sent an advance warning to Ankara, which backs some rebel factions and helped broker a ceasefire in Idlib.

A monitoring group said air strikes hit rebel territory in northwest Syria on Sunday for the first time since Russia and Turkey agreed to a buffer zone there in September.

Also Read: Russia, Turkey, Iran Fail to Agree on Ceasefire for Syria’s Idlib

In Aleppo city, which the government controls, the shells had spread a strong stench and caused breathing problems, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said.

State news agency SANA said on Sunday 107 people were injured, including children, after militants hit three districts with projectiles containing gases that caused choking.

It marks the highest such casualty toll in Aleppo since government forces and their allies clawed back the city from rebels nearly two years ago.

“We can not know the kinds of gases but we suspected chlorine and treated patients on this basis because of the symptoms,” Zaher Batal, the head of the Aleppo Doctors Syndicate, told Reuters.

Hospitals had discharged many people overnight. Batal said this was the first gas attack against civilians in the city since the conflict erupted more than seven years ago.

People stand in front of a hospital after what the Syrian state media said was a suspected toxic gas attack in Aleppo, Syria November 24, 2018. Credit: SANA/Handout via REUTERS

Stretchers and Oxygen Masks

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar and his Russian counterpart agreed on Sunday that “recent provocations” were aimed at harming the agreement on Idlib, the ministry said.

“There was an exchange of views to the effect that … they could continue and that one needed to be ready for them,” the ministry said in a statement.

Nobody has claimed the Aleppo attack so far.

“The explosive (shells) contain toxic gases that led to choking among civilians,” the city’s police chief Issam al-Shilli told state media.

Pictures and footage on SANA showed medical workers carrying patients on stretchers and helping them with oxygen masks.

Syria’s foreign ministry urged the UN Security Council to condemn and punish the attack.

Abdel-Salam Abdel-Razak, an official from the Nour el-Din al-Zinki insurgent faction, said rebels did not own chemical weapons or have the capacity to produce them.

Also Read: Syria Strike: The West Never Let Go of the White Man’s Burden

Abu Omar, a Failaq al-Sham spokesman, accused Damascus of trying to create “a malicious charade” as a pretext to attack rebel towns.

The UK-based Observatory said government shelling earlier on Saturday had killed two women and seven children in a village in Idlib.

The Russian-Turkish deal in September for a demilitarised zone staved off an army offensive against the Idlib region, including nearby parts of Aleppo and Hama provinces.

The dominant force among an array of factions holding sway in Idlib is Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist alliance led by fighters formerly linked to al-Qaeda.

A past UN-OPCW inquiry found the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin in 2017 and also used chlorine several times. It also blamed Islamic State for using mustard gas.

Damascus has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons in the war.

No rebel group has been confirmed to have used chemical weapons in the war by the by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

(Reuters)

It’s the Right Time to Review the World’s Chemical Weapons Convention

The use of chemical weapons has shifted from the battlefield to attacks on civilian targets. Time to rethink the convention that prohibits their use.

The chemical weapons convention (CWC) is one of the most successful arms control treaties in existence. It outlaws the production, stockpiling or research on offensive lethal chemical weapons.

Yet chemical weapons have recently featured in the news – such as the recent Novichok poisonings in the UK – and the convention is facing questions.

The 193 signatory nations to the convention will assemble from November 19 this year at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague for the latest periodic review of the chemical weapons convention.

As reported today in Science, this is an important opportunity to get some key things back on track.

The chemical weapons convention is a legacy of the end of the cold war. The collapse of the Soviet Union reinvigorated the long-dormant chemical weapons control process. This culminated with most nations signing and ratifying the chemical weapons convention, which came into force in 1997.

Each nation is responsible for the destruction of its own stockpile of weapons (either alone, or with the help of others), with compliance monitored by OPCW. So far about 96% of declared stocks of chemical weapon agents have been eliminated, including all of Russia’s declared stockpile.

Also Read: UN Documents Further Syrian Govt Use of Banned Chemical Weapons

Fit for the mid-21st century?

Most nations accept that chemical weapons are an anachronism, with only limited military value against an enemy of similar technological sophistication.

But there has been a rise in recent years in the use of chemical weapon agents against civilian populations, as in the Syrian civil war, and as tools of assassination, such as in the murder of Kim Jong-nam and the attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in the UK.

So are chemical weapons climbing out of the grave we thought we had consigned them to?

What is a chemical weapon?

It’s important to clear up a common misconception about the chemical weapons convention and how it handles lethal chemical agents.

Under the convention, the use of the pharmacological effects (what the chemical does to the body) of any chemical to achieve a military outcome (death or permanent disability) makes that a chemical weapon.

This means that novel agents, such as the Novichok (or A-series) chemicals alleged to have been used against the Skripals, are illegal, not because of their structure but due to the attempt to use them to kill.

This definition can create some complexities. If we take as a given that many chemicals are potentially lethal – it’s the dose that makes the poison – how do you regulate compounds that are likely to be used as weapons?

How should these be distinguished from those that could be fatal, but aren’t typically applied for ill-purpose? For example, the anticancer drug mustine – also known as nitrogen mustard – is a schedule 1 weapon under the chemical weapons convention (under the codename HN2).

Police action or short cut to new weapons?

Riot control agents are those such as pepper spray, 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (better known, slightly erroneously, as CS-gas). These compounds are designed to cause the victim discomfort. But the effects dissipate soon after the victim is removed from exposure – similar to if you get capsaicin in your eyes while cutting chillies, you can wash the compound away with lots of water or milk.

These agents are only lightly regulated under the chemical weapons convention. Their use is allowed as part of normal law enforcement, but prohibited in war.

Different to these, incapacitating agents are defined as those that cause the victim to lose consciousness, or otherwise become systemically incapacitated – but the effects of these are not reversible by removing exposure.

Examples include chemicals that cause massive sensory hallucinations and prevent the victim from recognising reality.

There is much debate about the ultimate safety of riot control agents, but in general they are seen as safe unless incorrectly used. On the other hand, a Russian incapacitating agent is believed to have caused many of the fatalities during the 2002 Moscow theatre siege.

So how can these agents be legal, while the agent used in Salisbury is immediately considered illegal? What is an appropriate level of chemical force that should be acceptable when applied to a person as part of civilian policing?

What level of research into, or stockpiling of, such compounds would suggest the goal is no longer to develop countermeasures, but is part of an offensive chemical weapons program?

The CWC was written to outlaw these things, but has its success only moved the goalposts? These are open questions that the review should address.

Responsibility of scientists

Questions about how responsible a scientist is for the use of their work probably go to Fitz Haber and beyond. The 1918 Nobel Prize winner is generally considered the father of modern chemical warfare for his suggestion that the Imperial German Army use chlorine, the first lethal chemical weapon of World War I.

Today there are several questions about how scientists should interact with the world, using their knowledge to educate the public through the media, while avoiding drawing attention to possible misuses of that knowledge (or allowing their messages to be manipulated to cause panic).

Is it a greater good for society for me to explain that nitrogen mustard (from the example above) treats cancer, than the risk that someone will now try to steal some mustine from the oncology clinic to misuse it?

There is also the problem of dual use technologies. These are techniques that can equally be used develop a new pharmaceutical, or could be applied to develop a new nerve agent.

How much regulation of day-to-day research and commerce is acceptable to prevent those who would do us harm having access to materials and knowledge?

In the 20 years since the ratification of the CWC, we have made discoveries and improved access to technologies that may make it easier to create a truly effective improvised chemical weapon.

The chemical weapons convention has almost reached the initial goal of the signatories, the elimination of chemical weapons. Now the convention needs to move with the times, to prevent backsliding from the prevailing culture that considers chemical weapons to be unspeakably barbaric.

Martin Boland is a Senior Lecturer of Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Charles Darwin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

UK Woman Dies After Being Poisoned by Soviet-Era Nerve Agent

Dawn Sturgess died after she was exposed to Novichok just a few kilometres from where Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were attacked with the same poison four months ago.

London: A British woman died on Sunday after she was poisoned by the same nerve agent that struck a former Russian spy in March and triggered a crisis in relations between Western capitals and Moscow.

Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after she was exposed to Novichok on June 30 in western England, just a few miles from where Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were attacked with the same poison four months ago.

The death of Sturgess was being investigated as a murder, police said in a statement.

Prime Minister Theresa May said she was appalled and shocked by the death.

Police said they were investigating how Sturgess and a 45-year-old man, named by media as Charlie Rowley, came across an item contaminated with Novichok, which was developed by the Soviet military during the Cold War.

The March attack on the Skripals prompted the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War as allies sided with Britain’s view that Moscow was either responsible or had lost control of the nerve agent.

Moscow hit back by expelling Western diplomats.

After Sturgess’ death on Sunday, Britain’s interior minister, Sajid Javid, said the “desperately sad news only strengthens our resolve to find out exactly what has happened.”

The head of UK Counter Terrorism policing, assistant commissioner Neil Basu, said Sturgess, a mother of three, died as the result of “an outrageous, reckless and barbaric act.”

The 45-year-old man remained critically ill in hospital.

The poisoning in March of the Skripals with Novichok was the first known offensive use of such a chemical weapon on European soil since World War II.

Russia, which is currently hosting the FIFA World Cup, has denied any involvement in the Skripal case and suggested the British security services had carried out the attack to stoke anti-Moscow hysteria.

Fatal touch

The two Britons were taken ill on June 30 in Amesbury, a town in southwest England, 11 km from Salisbury, where Skripal and his daughter Yulia were attacked.

The Britons were initially thought to have taken an overdose of heroin or crack cocaine.

But tests by the Porton Down military research centre showed they had been exposed to Novichok. Britain has notified the global chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Further tests of samples from Sturgess and the man showed they were exposed to the nerve agent after touching a contaminated item with their hands, police said on Sunday.

Javid said earlier on Sunday that police had a working hypothesis that the two poisoning incidents were connected. He also said there were no plans at this stage for further sanctions against Russia.

Sturgess died at Salisbury District Hospital, the same facility that nursed the critically ill Skripals.

Yulia Skripal, Sergei’s daughter, was in a coma for 20 days after she was attacked and was eventually discharged about five weeks after the poisoning. Her father was discharged on May 18.

The hospital’s medical director, Christine Blanshard, told the BBC that hospital staff worked tirelessly to save Sturgess. “They did everything they could,” she said.

Alastair Hay, a professor of environmental toxicology at Leeds University, said the hospital probably now had more experience than anywhere else in the world with Novichok cases, but there were limits to what doctors could do.

“Because the nerve agents compromise nerve and muscle function, their effects are widespread and where deaths occur these are usually due to either respiratory or circulatory failure, or both,” he said.

Britain’s public health authority acknowledged on Friday the concerns of people living in the area after the two incidents involving Novichok, but said it was confident that the risk to the public remained low.

The investigation into the nerve agent attacks is being led by Britain’s Counter Terrorism Policing Network, and the police said around 100 detectives were working round the clock alongside colleagues from Wiltshire police.

There was no evidence that the two Britons had visited any of the sites that were decontaminated following the attempted killings of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, police said on Sunday.

“We are not in a position to say whether the nerve agent was from the same batch that the Skripals were exposed to,” they said.

(Reuters)

US Suggests Russia, Syria May Tamper with Douma Evidence, Moscow Denies It

The US accused Russia of blocking international inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) from reaching the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and tampering with evidence.

Damascus/The Hague: The US accused Russia on April 16 of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground.

Moscow denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory US-led missile strikes on Syria on Saturday.

British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron faced criticism from political opponents over their decisions to take part in the air strikes.

Syria and Russia deny unleashing poison gas on April 7 during their offensive on Douma, which ended with the recapture of the town that had been the last rebel stronghold near the capital, Damascus.

Relief organisations say dozens of men, women and children were killed. Footage of young victims foaming at the mouth and weeping in agony has thrust Syria’s civil war – in which half a million people have been killed in the past seven years – to the forefront of world concern again.

Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) travelled to Syria last week to inspect the site, but have yet to gain access to Douma, which is now under government control after the rebels withdrew.

“It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site,” US Ambassador Kenneth Ward said at an OPCW meeting in The Hague on Monday.

(Reuters)