MOSCOW. April 10 (Interfax) - Russia will propose a draft UN Security Council resolution on investigating the reported chemical incident in Syria's Douma, which would stipulate that experts must visit the scene before drawing conclusions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"In order for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to perform its duties under the Chemical Weapons Convention and conduct the investigation with a mandatory trip to the scene and with the mandatory preservation of the integrity of the samples collected there during their relocation to the relevant laboratory, and to make sure that all this is done transparently and honestly, we will propose a draft resolution at the Security Council today, which will stipulate precisely this kind of investigation in response to a direct invitation from the Syrian government, which, as you know, was ready to protect experts on the ground as early as today," Lavrov said following a meeting with the North Korean foreign minister on Tuesday.
Moscow has still not received a response from the OPCW to the invitation to visit Syria's Douma, Lavrov said. "No, we haven't yet received any response. We have heard statements from The Hague that they have already started investigating this incident, or to be more precise, reports that the incident took place, because it's been impossible thus far to confirm the very fact of the use of any chemical substances," he said.
"We have invited OPCW experts to travel there, and we will insist on making sure that this visit and this trip take place. We can no longer trust findings obtained through a remote investigation, as was done in Khan Sheikhoun a year ago," Lavrov said.