EU says willing to ramp up sanctions following OPCW report

BRUSSELS - The EU on Thursday welcomed a report by the global chemical weapons watchdog blaming the Syrian government for toxic attacks, and said it was ready to consider further sanctions on Damascus.

Meanwhile the Syrian government criticised as "misleading" a report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that for the first time specifically blamed Damascus for using chemical weapons on a rebel-held Syrian town in 2017.

"The report of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on the use of poisonous substances in the town of Lataminah in 2017 is misleading and contains falsified and fabricated conclusions aimed at falsifying truths and accusing the Syrian government," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Syrian government said it rejected the contents of the report and "absolutely denies ever having used poisonous gases in the town of Lataminah or in any other Syrian city or village." Damascus insists it has handed over its chemical weapons stockpiles under a 2013 agreement, prompted by a suspected sarin gas attack that killed 1,400 in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.

Wednesday's report was the first from a new investigative team set up by the OPCW to identify the perpetrators of attacks in Syria's nine-year-old civil war.

It said two Syrian Arab Air Force Sukhoi SU-22 jet fighters dropped two bombs containing sarin on Lataminah on March 24 and 30, 2017. A Syrian military helicopter dropped a cylinder containing chlorine on a hospital in the same town on March 25 that year, the report said.

The OPCW said it could not identify the precise chain of command, but that orders for the attacks must have come from senior Syrian regime commanders.

The EU's diplomatic chief Josep Borrell welcomed the report on behalf of the 27 members of the bloc.

"We fully support the report's findings and note with great concern its conclusions," he said. "Those identified responsible for the use of chemical weapons must be held accountable for these reprehensible acts."

The report will now to go to the United Nations among others to decide what further action - if any - should be taken. Borrell said the EU was willing to consider expanding its sanctions against the Assad regime.

"The European Union has previously imposed restrictive measures on high-level Syrian officials and scientists for their role in the development and use of chemical weapons and is ready to consider introducing further measures as appropriate," he said in a statement.

The sanctions campaign currently imposed on Syria includes trade restrictions, travel bans and asset freezes. It is one of the most comprehensive sanctions regimes to ever be implemented by the US, EU and the UN, in response to the Assad regime's human rights violations during Syria's civil war.

The sanctions have been periodically strengthened due to escalating violence throughout the duration of the nine-year conflict, which began in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests and morphed into a regional proxy war involving Iran, Turkey, Russia and multiple sectarian militias.

The current coronavirus pandemic has led to calls for the lifting of sanctions to grant countries easier access to global markets, medical supplies and humanitarian aid. Syria was recently among the signatories of a letter to the UN that urged the global body to push for the lifting of sanctions.