Syrai signs the CWC; giess who doesn't?

Several UN diplomats and a UN official, however, told Reuters on condition of anonymity that it was not yet clear that Syria had fulfilled all the conditions for legal accession to the treaty.

"I think there are a few more steps they have to take (before Syria is a signatory) but that's why we're studying the document," a UN official said.

Syria was one of only seven countries not to have joined the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which commits members to destroying their stockpiles.

(Reuters) - Evidence strongly suggests Syrian government forces were responsible for a poison gas attack that killed more than 1,400 people, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday, contradicting repeated denials by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.S.-based rights group, in a report issued in New York, said it had reached its conclusion after analyzing witness accounts, information of the likely source of the attacks, remnants of the weapons used and medical records of victims.

"The evidence concerning the type of rockets and launchers used in these attacks strongly suggests that these are weapon systems known and documented to be only in the possession of, and used by, Syrian government armed forces," Human Rights Watch said.

"Human Rights Watch and arms experts monitoring the use of weaponry in Syria have not documented Syrian opposition forces to be in possession of the 140mm and 330mm rockets used in the attack, or their associated launchers."

Looming over all this is the great unmentionable: the cover the US provides for Israel's weapons of mass destruction. It's not just that Israel – which refuses to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention – has used white phosphorus as a weapon in Gaza (when deployed against people, phosphorus meets the convention's definition of "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm").

It's also that, as the Washington Post points out: "Syria's chemical weapons stockpile results from a never-acknowledged gentleman's agreement in the Middle East that as long as Israel had nuclear weapons, Syria's pursuit of chemical weapons would not attract much public acknowledgement or criticism." Israel has developed its nuclear arsenal in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty, and the US supports it in defiance of its own law, which forbids the disbursement of aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction.

In the interview, Assad confirmed that “in the next couple of days, Syria will send a petition to the United Nations and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”

A spokesman for Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon confirmed on Thursday that the UN had just received a document from the government of Syria that was in the process of being translated. The spokesman said it was meant to be an accession document concerning the Chemical Weapons Convention, which he called “the first step” toward joining the treaty. The spokesman would not say how quickly the document would be translated or when it would be made public.

Before a next step can be taken, the international community has to wait for the results of the report by the UN chemicalweapons investigative team, Security Council president Gary Quinlan of Australia said. The results, however, seem to already be widely known: According to an anonymous member of the inspection team who spoke to Foreign Policy magazine on Wednesday, the report is expected to show that chemical weapons were used on August 21 outside Damascus, and it may implicate the Assad government in the attack.

According to an anonymous member of the inspection team who spoke to Foreign Policy magazine on Wednesday, the report is expected to show that chemical weapons were used on August 21 outside Damascus, and it may implicate the Assad government in the attack.

The old anonymous member making a false claim story.

The report is out. It makes no claims at all implicating Assad govt.

Darby J wrote:

The report is out. It makes no claims at all implicating Assad govt.

Precisely. Yet the media is implying just the opposite if you go by the headlines and the analysis.

I think there is a word for that. Oh yeah. Lying.

US officials today blasted Arab nations for seeking to bring Israel’s nuclear weapons up at the IAEA, saying that singling out Israel as the only nuclear-armed nation in the region would harm the push to eliminate such arms in the region.

The Obama Administration had initially endorsed the idea of a nuclear-free Middle East, but has quickly backtracked on that position when it realized, apparently after the fact, that Israel is the only nation in the region with such weapons, and has ruled out giving them up. Since then Obama has endorsed Israel’s “right” to have such an arsenal.

IAEA chief Amano Yukiya says that the current situation appears unresolvable, and attempts to get Israel and the Arab nations of the region to agree on how to approach a nuclear-free region is a failure.

Why Syria has 1000 tonnes of chemical WMD

The elephant in the room, that determined Syria’s adoption of a chemical weapons program in the 1980s as a deterrent against an Israeli nuclear attack, is a uniquely American animal.

Ever since the assassination of John F Kennedy, successive US Presidents under pressure from the American Israel lobby, in Washington, have colluded in an extraordinary trick known as ‘nuclear ambiguity’ that has enabled Israel to covertly build the only undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal in the world.

Estimates as to the size of this secret arsenal vary between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads and it is reported that Israel now has the capability to deliver its WMD by intermediate-range ballistic missile, ICBM, strike aircraft and also by cruise missiles from a fleet of nuclear-armed submarines. An offensive capability for a second strike that is unmatched by any European state, all of whom are signatories to both the NPT and the CWC.

Israel is the only nuclear weapons state in the entire Middle East, Europe, Africa, Australasia, the United States and South America that has refused to be bound by these Agreements.

Nuclear WMD are many times more lethal than chemical weapons as they can spread their deadly radiation over thousands of square miles and cross both national and international borders.

This particular elephant, in the Syrian room, is an aggressive creature that Europe is increasingly unwilling to either feed or house.

Regional Cooperation Minister Silvan Shalom said unequivocally on Israel Radio on Thursday that Israel does not spy on the US, and has not done so since the Jonathan Pollard affair in the mid-1980s.

“As someone knowledgeable of all the details, there are crystal clear directives against any action in the US or against the US,” he said. “There is a complete ban.”

Shalom characterized any claims that Israel’s intelligence services acted against the US as a “lie and a libel.”

One government official, stressing that Israel was neither confirming nor denying the Guardian story, said only that Israel and the US enjoy “close intelligence cooperation.”

Since the Pollard affair, these orders were issued by then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, he said, adding that all prime ministers since then – including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu – have followed them.

“The directive to all the intelligence services is that there is no activity against the US,” the official said.

Yes.

Israel Pols can be counted on 100% to be fully truthful and forthcoming.

Well, not counting the part where they stole US nuclear technology and raw materials from the NUMEC Plan in PA in the 1960s to begin their undeclared, uninspected nuclear weapons program.

And about 100,000 other things.

Read this next sentence. It is amazing.

US officials today blasted Arab nations for seeking to bring Israel’s nuclear weapons up at the IAEA, saying that singling out Israel as the only nuclear-armed nation in the region would harm the push to eliminate such arms in the region.

So in order to eliminate nuclear weapons in the ME -- when the only one who has them -- we cannot bring up Israel's nuclear weapons. Per US officials. Wow!

What does the former have to do with the latter?

Just saying. wrote:

What does the former have to do with the latter?

Good question.

How can it hurt the effort to eliminate nukes in the ME by including in the discussion the nukes of the only nation in the region that has them?

Good Ole Zion*st double talk

You didn't answer the question. And you whine about double talk ?

Just saying. wrote:

You didn't answer the question. And you whine about double talk ?

Your question is incomprehensible.

Why not try to make your point in a brief sentence?

Incomprehensible to you perhaps, but not to the average fifth grader.

Just saying. wrote:

Incomprehensible to you perhaps, but not to the average fifth grader.

Actually just incomprehensible without limit.

What are you trying to say?

From MSN internet story 9/19/13:

"The U.S., Britain, France and others believe that a report by U.N. inspectors has proven the attack was conducted by the Syrian military. The U.N. report released Monday confirmed that chemical weapons were used in the attack, but did not ascribe blame."

Classic Zi*nist Big Lie.

A report that does not ascribe blame proves the attack was done by the Syrian military. How's that work?

Before the report that assigned no blame, we heard all about the proof the West had that proved the Syrian military did it. Hell, they probably had their proof well before the attack took place. Let's be honest.

Just saying. wrote:

Incomprehensible to you perhaps, but not to the average fifth grader.

Oh. I get it. Rather than address the damning facts about Israel, you attack the comment for addressing two different problems. How insane to address two things in one comment. Surely this discredits both

here you go. And I won't reply to your inevitable non-logical and non-sensible reply.

__

A United Nations report released on Monday confirmed that a deadly chemical arms attack caused a mass killing in Syria last month and for the first time provided extensive forensic details of the weapons used, which strongly implicated the Syrian government.

While the report’s authors did not assign blame for the attack on the outskirts of Damascus, the details it documented included the large size and particular shape of the munitions and the precise direction from which two of them had been fired. Taken together, that information appeared to undercut arguments by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria that rebel forces, who are not known to possess such weapons or the training or ability to use them, had been responsible.

The report, commissioned by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, was the first independent on-the-ground scientific inquest

into the attack, which left hundreds of civilians gassed to death, including children, early on Aug. 21.

These findings, though not presented as evidence of responsibility, were likely to strengthen the argument of those who claim that the Syrian government bears the blame, because the weapons in question had not been previously documented or reported to be in possession of the insurgency.

Moreover, those weapons are fired by large, conspicuous launchers. For rebels to have carried out the attack, they would have had to organize an operation with weapons they are not known to have and of considerable scale, sophistication and secrecy — moving the launchers undetected into position in areas under strong government influence or control, keeping them in place unmolested for a sustained attack that would have generated extensive light and noise, and then successfully withdrawing them — all without being detected in any way.

One annex to the report also identified azimuths, or angular measurements, from where rockets had struck, back to their points of origin. When plotted and marked independently on maps by analysts from Human Rights Watch and by The New York Times, the United Nations data from two widely scattered impact sites pointed directly to a Syrian military complex.

Other nonproliferation experts said the United Nations report was damning in its implicit incrimination of Mr. Assad’s side in the conflict, not only in the weaponry fragments but also in the azimuth data that indicated the attack’s origins. An analysis of the report posted online by the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said “the additional details and the perceived objectivity of the inspectors buttress the assignment of blame to Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government.”