By Vestnik Kavkaza
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will hold a trilateral meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday night. They will discuss the transfer of Syrian chemical weapons under international control and prospects for the settlement of the conflict in Syria. The UK speaks for a diplomatic solution of the problem too.
Chris Doyle, Director of the Arab-British Center, called the Russian-US agreements on Syrian chemical weapons a very important step to exclude the weapons from use in Syria. He called chemical weapons exceptionally dangerous tools for the Syrian case. Doyle expects compromises in the peace talks. The expert noted that the conflict would escalate, because refugees continue to cross the border and children were dying of hunger. Doyle sees no solutions for the conflict.
Yevgeny Satanovsky, President of the Institute for the Near East, said: “Syria will most likely cease to exist after the resignation of Assad, so there will be no country where Islamists, extremists, moderates, terrorists of Al Qaeda or anyone else could come to power. There is no single power fighting against Assad, there are many separate groups fighting each other, including ones fighting on the Syrian territory. I am afraid our British friends, if they achieve victory over Assad, would face their own terrorists of Al Qaeda with British passports on their own territory. Perhaps, they should question how chemical weapons, including sarin and, most likely, mustard gas, were acquired by militants, including field commanders operating in Damascus. Everything is clear with Assad’s weapons. It is more or less under control of the government. The government may be very unappealing or authoritarian (although I wish I could find at least on non-authoritarian government in Africa or the Middle East), but what do we do with terrorists, including the ones using chemical weapons in Syria? Or do our British friends think that it will not cross the English Channel? It will!”
Heather Williams, an expert for security, arms control and disarmament of the Royal Institution, believes that Syrian chemical weapons need safe transfer and utilization. There is no time for discussions. She noted that there were technical and political challenges and obstacles. The UN will have to secure an armistice or cease-fire to allow inspectors to do their work. Williams said that the obvious solution was to transfer weapons to Russia where infrastructure had all the necessary facilities to utilize the chemical weapons. The decision was also part of the plan of Kerry and Lavrov.
Pyotr Topychkanov, a member of the Non-Proliferation Program of the Moscow Carnegie Center, said: “The investigation under the auspices of the UN should continue as intensively as it was before the report was published. The answer to the question of who used the chemical weapons in Syria will affect the question of whether they will be used in the future. If it is a problem related to the forces of the Syrian president, that is one story. He will be the least interested individual to see them used on the Syrian territory again. If is a problem of forces fighting against Assad’s regime, chances that the weapons would be used against peaceful citizens would be even greater.
If we imagine a scenario where Assad signs an agreement and the project for utilization of chemical weapons starts realization while another case of chemical weapons used against a civil facility is registered, the agreements with Assad be disrupted and his legitimacy undermined. Especially when Barack Obama was saying that the US had doubts about Assad’s opening all arsenals he controlled. After such an attack, the agreements would be ruined. This is why we need to choose to continue investigations and find those using the chemical weapons before starting the project for the utilization of chemical weapons, construction of facilities and transfer of special forces.
