TEHRAN – Deputy Foreign
Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Reza Najafi has said that those German and American companies that have provided former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with the chemical weapons during its 1980s imposed war are complicit in these crimes and must be brought to justice.
Najafi made the remarks while addressing the 27th Conference of States Parties (CSP-27) Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague on Monday.
“As the biggest victim of chemical weapons in the contemporary history, Iran neither forgives nor forgets the perpetrators and supporters of Iraq’s chemical attacks and these crimes,” the Iranian diplomat added.
Najafi urged the OPCW member states to fulfill their commitments and remove the inhumane unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran in violation of the human rights principles, which blocked the access of Iranian chemical veterans to their required equipment and medicines, saying all these bans must be removed immediately.
“The Zionist regime of Israel is in possession of various types of weapons of mass destruction and is the most serious threat to peace and security in the region and the world. It is the cause of the failure of [establishment of a] Middle East region free of weapons of mass destruction,” the Iranian diplomat pointed out.
He called on the member states of the conference to take action to realize the universality of the convention and establish a world free of chemical weapons.
On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani showed up at a presser with a chemical mask in the presser, which alluded to Germany’s support for ex-Iraqi dictator Saddam during the 1980-1988 imposed war on Iran and supply of chemical warfare by Berlin to the deposed Ba’ath regime.
Kan’ani said it would not cooperate with the so-called fact-finding mission created after a UN Human Rights Council resolution, engineered by Germany, to probe claims of human rights abuses during the recent riots, stressing that Tehran has already formed a national fact-finding committee to look into the events.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian has also said earlier that Germany, itself, was the main provider of chemical weapons to the Saddam regime during the Iraqi imposed war against Iran, which were frequently used against Iranian people with disastrous consequences.
“Now, they are abusing HR mechanisms to perpetrate more HR violations, all in the name of a farce “solidarity” w Iranians,” the top Iranian diplomat said.
On Thursday, the UN Human Rights Council convened a meeting at the request of Germany and Iceland to discuss alleged human rights violations in Iran during the recent foreign-backed riots in the country.
The inter-governmental body voted to establish an independent international fact-finding mission