“We formally sent a letter to the United Nations, we asked them in that letter to send a delegation in order to investigate what happened in Khan Shaykhun,” Assad said. “Of course till this moment they didn’t send (the experts), because the West and the US blocked any delegation from coming,” he added.
Bashar Assad believes that Washington is hampering the probe because if the experts arrive in Idlib, “they will find that all their (the US) narratives about what happened in Khan Shaykhun and then the attack on Shayrat airport was a false flag, was a lie.”
“Now the only contact I think is between Russia and maybe the other countries in order to send that delegation. Till this moment, we didn’t have any positive news regarding any delegation coming,” he added.
On April 4, an alleged chemical attack killed dozens of people in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria’s Idlib province.
Without any investigation carried out, the US labeled Assad’s government as perpetrators and fired a barrage of Tomahawk missiles at Shayrat airbase, which it said was the source of the attack.
Russia has called for a thorough investigation of the chemical incident, which would include an on-site inspection in the rebel-held territory, before coming to any conclusions.
“Actually, since the first attack a few years ago that happened in Aleppo by the terrorists against our army, we asked the United Nations to send investigation delegation in order to prove what we said about the terrorists having gases used against our army, and later many incidents happened in that way, and they didn’t send any delegation. It’s the same now,” Assad told Sputnik.
Earlier this week, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that it is identifying sarin in samples related to the April 5 incident.
However, the watchdog never explained how it obtained the samples, as its experts have not visited Khan Shaykhun yet.
The Russian military questioned the swift analysis of the samples, saying the OPCW did not act with such speed in another incident in which a militant group reportedly used mustard gas in Aleppo.
“Russian specialists on the site of the crime [in Aleppo] collected samples of the agent, which had been delivered to representatives of the OPCW and transported to the Hague. By the way, the Syrian leadership at the time offered safety guarantees and insisted that OPCW experts visit Aleppo, but nobody came,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Thursday.
“Four months later the OPCW still cannot come to a conclusion and call the mustard gas found there mustard gas, saying additional analysis is necessary,” he added.
Assad reiterated the Syrian stance that no chemical attack ever took place in Idlib. Read full in RT