Statement by Ambassador Vassily A. Nebenzia, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, during the UN Security Council meeting on the US resolution before the vote on extending the JIM mandate
What is happening right now smells bad. Let me explain. A few days before the release of the report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), a draft resolution (S/2017/884) on extending it for a year is thrown together. In the runup to that, a major information campaign is under way in the media. Ambassador Haley gives a number of interviews in which she unambiguously accuses Russia of wanting to torpedo the work of the JIM. She sends a letter to Security Council members on the urgent need to extend the Mechanism’s mandate for a year.
At the same time, it justifies the lack of action by the Fact-finding Mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based on a conveniently timed note from the Fact-finding Mission supposedly explaining — but actually justifying that lack of action — why a fact-finding mission did not attempt to establish the facts and did not even visit the scene of the incident under discussion.
We will come back to the Fact-finding Mission later. The note from the Permanent Representative of the United States suddenly, and clearly accidentally, falls into the hands of the The New York Times, which last Saturday, 21 October, publishes a long article on the subject, beginning with the words “A confrontation that is looming at the United Nations between the United States and Russia”.
What do we call that? We call it preparing your artillery. Let me remind the Council that the JIM was established in August 2015 as a joint — I repeat, a joint — initiative of Russia and the United States. It was established in order to conduct a thorough, professional and objective investigation and to identify the perpetrators of incidents involving the use of toxic chemical agents. The Mechanism was given a broad mandate and provided with everything needed for its implementation. On 26 October — that is, this Thursday — the JIM report on the 4 April incident in Khan Shaykhun is due to come out. Naturally, we have all been eagerly awaiting the release of the report and its conclusions.
Incidentally, contrary to what Ambassador Haley claimed in one of her interviews, Russia has not read the JIM report in advance and is not familiar with its conclusions. So why extend the Mechanism’s mandate two days before the release of the report?
We all want to familiarize ourselves with it, discuss its content and conclusions calmly, and then, just as calmly, return to the issue of the extension of the JIM, whose mandate expires on 17 November. Which means we have plenty of time to extend it. Is that illogical? Or confrontational? Then why put the cart before the horse?
There is something else I should explain. Let me remind the Council of the facts. On 4 April, there was an incident involving the use of chemical agents in Khan Shaykhun. The United States and its allies were quick to blame Damascus for it and on 7 April, violating every norm of international law, the United States launched a missile strike on the Shayrat airbase. From day one, before any conclusions and before the investigation itself, it had already decided on the perpetrators. Clearly, then, that illegal action can be justified only if the JIM investigation’s findings confirm its version. And should the JIM dare to come out with a different version, that would raise the question of why it bombed Shayrat. And that would not be very convenient.
The United States is not interested in either the lack of evidence or the laughable techniques and methods of the investigation. It has decided on the guilty party, and decided it in advance. Let me point out that it has said that at every opportunity. In human terms, this is understandable. A bad performance, badly directed, has not done the job. There is no evidence for an air strike, and what there is is all too clearly a stitch-up.
We have to shove it out of sight so that no one is any the wiser and extract ourselves from an awkward situation without losing face. How do we do that? Easy. After all, we can always blame Russia for everything.
So how do we arrange the cover-up? We can throw together a draft resolution extending the JIM mandate a few days before the report’s release on 26 October, even though that is not remotely urgent. The JIM will be operational until 17 November and there is nothing forcing us to take the decision to extend it before then. So why do we do so now, and in such a hurry? Does nobody find that strange? Is it not the case that the American side knows the report’s conclusions and understands that the evidence for their theory will not stand up to any criticism and that in turn could call into question extending a mechanism that is not equal to its task and serves only to justify unseemly political aims?
The United States — and, incidentally, not only the United States — has accused Russia of putting pressure on the JIM. To quote Ambassador Haley, in an interview on 18 October she said, “The Russians have made it very clear that should the report blame the Syrians suddenly, they won’t have faith in the JIM. If the report doesn’t blame the Syrians, then they say that they will”.
We have never said that, and there is no record of any such quote from us. And if it is not a quote but the Americans continues to assert it anyway, that is defamation. What we have always said is that what we are expecting from the JIM is a fair, objective, professional, unbiased investigation.
We have said that we are relying on the fact that the JIM will not go the route of the OPCW Fact-finding Mission and repeat its obvious mistakes, which I fear are deliberate. We have also said that if the report presents irrefutable proof of the guilt of any of the parties, we will agree with it.
But, yes, we really have said that we doubt that any such proof will be presented. And we have reason to doubt it, because the JIM’s methods of work, which we have indeed criticized, give cause for concern. Because it is impossible to conduct a full-fledged, objective, professional investigation with such methods. But we have also said that we should not anticipate. Let us wait for the release of the JIM’s report and then judge it on its professionalism and objectivity.
Note that I do not say judge it based on whom it accuses, but on its professionalism and objectivity. But in the same interview I cited, Ambassador Haley said, “It would be a shame if Russia chose to decide whether to have an investigative mechanism based on who was to blame in Khan Shaykhun”.
Let me repeat that we have never raised any such question.
I will cite one more quote from Ambassador Haley’s interview — I like quoting her. “We can’t go and pick and choose who we want to be at fault.” There I fully agree with her. Only this is the problem — it is not us but the United States that has already decided who is to blame. From day one, the United States has asserted that the Syrian Government was at fault, and it punished Syria for that with a missile attack on the Shayrat airbase. It has asserted that the Syrian Air Force dropped a sarin bomb on the heads of its own citizens. I am not even talking here about the feeble evidence presented to us or the obvious signs that the video they showed us of the scene of the incident was staged.
We discussed all of that during the briefing on the margins of the General Assembly on 13 October. If anyone is not yet familiar with it, we can circulate copies of the statement in English right now. But has anyone thought about the sense of Syrian aircraft using a sarin bomb? Is anyone here capable of understanding how pointless its use would be from a military point of view when there are other conventional and far more effective means of destruction at one’s disposal? Has it never occurred to anyone that there is less reason to blame Damascus for using chemical weapons than anybody else?
By introducing this draft resolution now, the United States is destroying the Security Council’s unity and artificially dividing it. We all understand how important that unity is. We understand it. Our colleagues in the Security Council understand it, as do the other Member States. But something else is important to the United States. It needs to show that Russia is to blame for not extending the JIM and proclaim to the whole world that it is Russia that has divided the Council. (spoke in English) The United States is begging for confrontation in the Security Council. (spoke in Russian) But right now we are trying to help the American delegation save face. They will not be able to show Russia in an unattractive light, which is what they are obviously trying to achieve.
We will not allow the adoption of the draft resolution now because, as we have said, and as they were well aware, when they proposed the text of this hastily drawn up draft resolution we said that the extension should follow the report and its discussion — in that order. However, nothing is preventing us from going back and extending the JIM mandate after the report has been published and we have taken our time to review and discuss it in the Security Council.
Moreover, when the issue of extending the JIM mandate is discussed in the Council, we will insist upon amending its mandate to ensure that it succinctly includes the elements of professionalism and impartiality that we want to see. Others should not try to give the impression that, unless they take our arguments into account and, contrary to the voice of reason, adopt the draft resolution today, the JIM will become a dead letter. They know that we will not allow the draft resolution to be adopted today.
Could it be that this is an an intentional attempt to demonstrate to the world that Russia wants to close down the JIM at any cost? That is not true. We are ready to return to negotiations aimed at extending the JIM mandate following the publication of the report and its discussion after 26 October.
For the time being, I call on the United States delegation to postpone the adoption of the draft resolution until the report’s publication. I should not like to feel obliged to repeat the words of the United States representative who proposed postponing a vote in 1946 “in order to avoid the painful necessity of casting a negative vote at this time” (S/PV.55, p. 68).
