Assad’s Disarmament Chair Syria now leads a U.N.-related body opposed to chemical weapons.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/assads-disarmament-chair-1527633758
Anyone who still thinks that world peace and order can be enforced from something called the United Nations might want to consider that Syria this week assumed the rotating presidency of the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament. That’s Syria as in Bashar Assad, as in sarin gas, as in barrel bombs dropped on innocent civilians.
The Conference is a multinational body based in Geneva that was established in 1979 to promote reductions in armaments, especially weapons of mass destruction. Though independent from the U.N., it reports annually to Turtle Bay, and the director-general of the U.N. office in Geneva is secretary-general of the Conference. Syria is now leading the group because it follows Switzerland in the alphabetical list of member nations.
The appointment is best understood in light of the Conference’s proudest achievement: The 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. Apparently no one at the Conference sees any contradiction with having at its helm a regime that has used such weapons on its own people.
In 2012 Barack Obama declared the use of chemical weapons by Syria a “red line” that would trigger U.S. intervention. Assad used sarin gas anyway. In 2017 Syria used gas again, and President Trump responded with a missile strike on a Syrian airbase. Assad used chemical bombs again in April, which provoked another U.S. strike on Syria joined by Britain and France. On Friday U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said Assad has used chemical weapons at least 50 times.
Over the seven years of Syria’s civil war, more than 400,000 Syrians have been killed. The war might have been mitigated if Russia hadn’t used its veto at the U.N. to protect the Assad regime. At the U.N. they like to call what they do “collective security,” an oxymoron on the order of Syrian disarmament.
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