Syrian govt denies using chemical arms

THE HAGUE: Syria on Monday denied ever using chemical weapons in its four-year-old civil war, telling a global watchdog it was cooperating fully with the destruction of its toxic stockpile.
Damascus’s rebuttal comes amid growing accusations it is not being transparent with the world’s chemical watchdog and UN efforts are stepped up to track down the perpetrators of deadly chlorine gas attacks in the war-torn country last year.
"We wish here to state categorically that we have never used chlorine or any other toxic chemicals during any incidents or any other operations in the Syrian Arab Republic since the beginning of the crisis and up to this very day," Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Moqdad told the annual meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Damascus rejected "the false accusations against Syria with respect to its supposed use of chlorine as a weapon in military operations," he added, speaking in Arabic through an interpreter.
The accusations "only serve political agendas, which also aim at diverting our successes in eliminating our chemical weapons," Moqdad said.
But Western countries including the European Union (EU), the United States and Canada have lambasted Syria, raising doubts whether President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is truly committed to ridding the country of all chemical arms.
There are "many uncertainties regarding the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons programme, notably the gaps and contradictions contained in Syria’s declarations," EU representative Jacek Bylica told the meeting, attended by delegates from the OPCW’s 192 states.
Meanwhile, Russian air strikes in support of the Syrian government have killed more than 1,500 people, a third of them civilians, since they began two months ago, a monitor said Monday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian raids that began on September 30 have killed 419 Islamic State group fighters as well as 598 from al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front and other rebel groups.
But the raids also killed 485 civilians, including 117 children and 47 women, the Britain-based Observatory said.
Russia has long been a staunch ally of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and has backed him throughout the uprising that began in March 2011.
It stepped up its support with an aerial campaign that it says targets IS Jihadists and other "terrorists".
Syrian opposition forces accuse Moscow of targeting moderate and Islamist rebels rather than Jihadists.