Nikki Haley: Russia impeding progress on curbing chemical weapons

Russia has undermined international efforts to mitigate the use of chemical weapons, according to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.

“[O]ne nation stands in the way of the Security Council fulfilling its duty,” Haley said Thursday during a meeting on weapons of mass destruction. “That nation is Russia.”

That was a reference to Russian support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom the U.S. and western allies have accused of using chemical weapons in his fight to survive a civil war. Russian officials have maintained that the chemical weapons attacks were conducted by terrorists or western-linked enemies of the Assad regime.

Her remarks also extended a dispute about the expiration of the U.N. entity, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism, tasked with reviewing the incidents.

“The JIM determined that the Assad regime and ISIS used chemical weapons in Syria,” Haley said. “It was Russia that vetoed three Council resolutions that would have renewed the Joint Investigative Mechanism. It is Russia that has gone to great lengths at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague to prevent the Assad regime from being held accountable for its actions.”

Russia vetoed the renewal of the JIM in November, arguing that the investigators hadn’t produced meaningful evidence and that a U.S. plan to extend the probe was biased against Assad. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who attended Thursday’s Security Council meeting, reversed Haley’s claims and suggested that the U.S. is endangering the world.

"Unfortunately, all our proposals have been always met with tough resistance from a number of our Western colleagues, who prefer to turn a blind eye to the facts of use and even production of chemical weapons by terrorists, and come forward with unfounded accusations against Damascus,” Lavrov said.

U.N. investigators reported that soil samples collected from the attack site by the Assad regime established the use of chemical weapons.

“The United States works hard to ensure the nonproliferation of these deadly weapons,” Haley said. “We encourage the creation of a security environment that benefits nonproliferation. And we believe all nations have a moral responsibility to join in the creation of such an environment.”