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US using chemical weapons as pretext to keep pressure on Syria: Activist

Monday, 12 March 2018 1:46 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 12 March 2018 2:08 PM ]

An activist believes the United States is using the issue of chemical weapons as a pretext to keep pressure on Syria and carry out any possible attack against the Syrian army.

“So this chemical weapons story keeps popping up over and over and over again, and of course as we saw during the Iraq war, after [the former Iraqi dictator] Saddam [Hussein] had been disarmed of chemical weapons, the US government later claimed that he did not disarm and later used that as a … [pretext] to invade [Iraq]. The same scenario for Syria. As soon as Syria disarmed, a few months later all these stories came out that actually we do not believe that Syria disarmed. This is just basically the repetition of the Iraq war,” Mimi al-Laham told Press TV in an interview on Monday.

The US and its western and regional allies have often pointed their fingers at the Syrian government for chemical attacks, which Damascus has consistently denied.

On Sunday, US Defense Secretary James Mattis repeated Washington and its allies’ allegations against the Syrian government, warning that it would be “very unwise” for it to use chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta and elsewhere.

Syria surrendered its chemical stockpiles in 2014 under the supervision of the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.