On Oct. 5, the UN Security Council blocked the testimony of Jose Bustani, the Brazilian diplomat who served as the first director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), on allegations that the agency’s investigation into the gas attack that allegedly took place in Douma, Syria in April 2018 was fraudulent. His testimony was blocked in a procedural vote after the U.K. representative on the Council raised an objection on the specious ground that his statement would “politicize” the council’s discussions and “distract from the real issues,” the UN’s release on the meeting reported. Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, United Kingdom, United States all voted against the procedural motion to allow Bustani to speak; Russia, China and South Africa voted “yes,” while the remaining members of the council all abstained. Bustani’s statement was then read into the meeting record by Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia.
Bustani’s statement was also published by Max Blumenthal’s The Grayzone site which also reports that Bustani’s firing in April 2002 as Director General of the OPCW was orchestrated by John Bolton, then Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, because of his unwillingness to go along with the neoconservative G.W. Bush Administration’s drive for war on Iraq. The statement grew out of Bustani’s involvement in a panel organized by the Courage Foundation in October 2019, which heard the account of an OPCW expert on the refusal of the organization to consider evidence that contradicted the official U.S./U.K. narrative that a chemical attack that allegedly took place in Douma, Syria in April 2018. In retaliation for that supposed attack, the U.S., Britain and France launched a missile attack on Syria.
“I was removed from office following a U.S.-orchestrated campaign in 2002 for, ironically, trying to uphold the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Bustani said early in his statement. “My removal was subsequently ruled to be illegal by the International Labor Organization’s Administrative Tribunal.” He stressed that during his tenure as head of the agency, his highest objective was to ensure that the OPCW treated all nations equally, regardless of political or economic power, and to make it a model of multilateralism in pursuit of the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
