U.S. dark record could not be whitewashed

TEHRAN, Nov. 30(MNA) – Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was scheduled to travel to The Hague on Sunday to attend the Sixteenth Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), but Hungary refused to allow the plane carrying Salehi to the Netherlands to enter its airspace and the trip was cancelled. Salehi was to give a keynote speech at the meeting and slam the United States for not fulfilling its international obligations with regard to the total eradication of weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical weapons. There is good evidence that arrogant powers, which could not stand being criticized for the violation of international regulations, have broken diplomatic norms and pressured a weak member of the European Union, namely Hungary, to deny overflight to Salehi’s plane, in a vain attempt to block Iran’s drive to drum up support for a motion aimed at adopting punitive measures against the U.S. for not complying with the CWC. Under the CWC, April 29, 2012 is the final deadline for the total eradication of all chemical weapons, but the U.S., which is the country that has the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, has officially announced that it would not meet the 2012 deadline and has set 2021 as its target date. Iran says the U.S. failure to meet its international commitments with regard to the total abolition of chemical weapons is in flagrant violation of the CWC and is a major threat to peace and security in the world, so states parties should take collective action to compel the U.S. to revise its military policies and bring them into line with the requirements of the CWC. According to the article 12 of the CWC, in cases where serious damage to the object and purpose of the convection may result from a member state’s activities, which are prohibited under the convention, the conference may recommend collective measures to states parties in conformity with international law. The conference shall, in cases of particular gravity, bring the issue, including relevant information and conclusions, to the attention of the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council. It is worth mentioning that due to the expansion of modern communications, the world’s people are well aware of U.S. actions, which are in gross breach of the principles of international law, and attempts made to cover up the U.S. dark record of failure to abide by international mechanisms, which have been developed to ban the use, stockpiling, production of the weapons of mass destruction, are of no avail.