UK calls for global action on chemical weapons ban

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON

The U.K. government has called for a wide international plan of action to defend the ban on chemical weapons Tuesday.

The announcement came on Tuesday as British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is traveling to The Hague “to meet with international partners on how to strengthen and protect the global ban against chemical weapon use”.

The special Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) session called for by the U.K. and 10 other states, following the March 4 Salisbury nerve agent attack that targeted former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

The U.K. is also calling for the international community to ask the OPCW “to help identify those responsible for chemical attacks in Syria, and ask the Organisation’s Director General to develop ideas for other ways of supporting the OPCW, upholding the ban on chemical weapons, and helping states implement the Convention,” a government statement said.

Johnson said “more than 80 countries supported the U.K.’s request for this special meeting of members of the OPCW” on Tuesday at the House of Commons.

“This support from the international community demonstrates a shared recognition that the global norm against chemical weapons use is being threatened, following the horrific attacks in Syria and Salisbury in recent months,” he added.

Recalling that the international community came together in 1997 “to outlaw the development, stockpiling and use of these vile substances through the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Johnson said “we now owe a duty to the world to seize the opportunity that this meeting provides to uphold and strengthen that ban, so that chemical weapons are truly banished to the past.”

Skripal, 66, and his daughter were admitted to a hospital after being found unconscious on March 4 in Salisbury.

“Mr. Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia,” specifically from the Novichok group, British Prime Minister Theresa May said following the attack.

The incident had drawn comparisons to the 2006 death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko after drinking radioactive tea. Former KGB bodyguards identified as suspects in the murder denied any involvement.

Sergei Skripal was granted refuge in the U.K. following a 2010 spy exchange between the U.S. and Russia. Before the exchange, he had been serving a 13-year prison term for leaking information to the British intelligence.

Russia missed a deadline set by London to explain how a certain type of military-grade nerve agent was used in the attack and faced a world-wide expulsion of 153 Russian diplomats.