 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us our editor in chief, Pabir Purkayastha and we are going to talk about what is happening in Syria now. There are claims that 70 people have died in Syria in chemical attacks and in response US has bombed Syrian air force base blaming the Assad government and Syrian army. Similar allegations were made against Saddam Hussein and now they are blaming Assad. So how do you think how credible are these allegations? This has been always the problem that anytime the Americans want to do something they claim that the party against whom they want to launch military attacks is having weapons of mass destruction or is going to use weapons of mass destruction and the American media, the global media and the American people seem to all then fall in line behind their government. This has been a problem because we have found that the weapons of mass destruction, the allegations that were made at that time against Saddam Hussein were simply not true. But in spite of that today if you ask the people more than 50 percent will say that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. So the scenario is set up as the US government wants to people to believe and later on even if facts come to light it really does not make a difference. Is it a replay of the same scenario we see in Syria? Now let us look at the record that we have seen earlier. In Syria there are similar allegations in Damascus in eastern Ghouta where also it was claimed that the Assad government had used serene gas against its citizens. Now a whole bunch of investigations were done by the time. There was Karla Ponte was one of the in the part of the fact-finding team of the United Nations who had investigated the claims and she had said she believed that the rebels Al Qaeda forces were really responsible for the attack. She was in shut up. She hasn't spoken after this again. All the investigations that were carried out at the time by the fact-finding mission. After investigations had said there is really no clear picture who was responsible for the attack but they also said two things which are not publicly known. One of it is that the serene that was used did not seem to have stabilizers in fact didn't have stabilizers which a military-grade weapon would always have and Syria obviously has the ability to make chemical weapons because that's the stock they had which they surrendered after the eastern Ghouta attack. So Syrian government certainly had military-grade serene, had stabilizers, knew how to use chemicals. Without the stabilizers it does appear that it would be essentially could be what is called kitchen serene. That means something that you develop in Oba basement mixing certain chemicals and therefore it would not have the kind of quality you'd expect from a Syrian government or military operations. The second important part and I think this is the part which again needs a certain amount of exposure is that it is also true that Libyan military stocks which the Russians said yes Libyan government had those military stocks they fell into the hands of the Islamic rebels as we know in Libya and there are very serious claims that they were transported through Turkey into Syria. Now in Turkey it is also again public knowledge that serene gas was found in the possession of the Syrian rebels that it was a Turkish exercise of trying to catch people who could be causing all kinds of problems for them and they found say serene gas to be in the possession of the Syrian rebels it has been traced and it was at the time public the whole thing was hushed up later. So the question remains that if serene is available with the rebels then is it possible that it is only Syrian government we have to think about. The other part of it is is it serene at all the only credible evidence of serene comes supposedly from the Turkish authorities who have claimed some of the people who are admitted had symptoms which indicated for serene. Now Turkish government is not a credible witness in this case because if the rebels had chemical weapons the supply route is Turkey. So therefore we have to also assume the Turkish government could be complicit in this either in the past or even now. So I don't think Turkish government can be serious witness to this. Therefore this whole argument that it was either serene it is not some other poison gas it is not some other chemicals which were stored over there which were hit by some action I think all this needs to be investigated and it cannot be investigated by the US claiming they have evidence because the US evidence in the past has been highly suspect and we have known for a long time that whether it is Eastern Ghouta as we have seen earlier or Saddam this evidence is still has really not been credible. Saddam of course in the classic example the went to war captured Iraq searched the whole of Iraq for the WMG which they couldn't find. So this is one part of it let us not forget the last part which is the Syrian government had said they have 12 places where chemical weapons were there and 10 of the weapons the places where chemical weapons were there were under Syrian government control and these are the chemical stocks which were actually destroyed. Now the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons is a record two of these stockpiles were in rebel areas and therefore they were not under the control of the Syrian government. So how do we know that these stocks did not fall into rebel hands it could have been used. So the fact that the US has decided to be the sole authority who can sub claim that what is evidence and what is the truth is really the problem in this case because US has no such credibility. So if these chemical weapons were used in Syria so under the treaty prohibiting use and development of chemical weapons who is responsible what is the procedure that now needs to be followed and what is the role of UN Security Council in all this. It is a very important question we have to first find out whether it was really the use of a chemical weapon it could very easily have been stockpile chemicals which were hit by the bombing which took place in Khan Shahan and if that is so then it would not qualify as use of chemical weapons it was unfortunate Bhopal gas disaster killed 1200 people it was not use of a chemical weapon and therefore you don't go to war over Bhopal for example. So there are incidents where chemicals can lead to accidents and if the accident takes place people die it is very unfortunate but it happens did this happen during this war this particular case also needs to be investigated. So the organization for prohibition of chemical weapons has what are called fact-finding missions. The fact-finding missions task is to find out what the real truth is and they have to take samples they have to talk to the sides the two sides which are there who get access to the place where the incident is taking place and here is a problem the UN fact-finding mission the sorry the OPCW's fact-finding mission finds it very difficult to operate in rebel hill territories Syrian government gives it access but the rebels don't and therefore they really rely completely on third hand fourth hand information. So that's one problem that we have but the procedure is it's really the fact-finding mission which is to find out from the facts from soil samples from biological samples of the people who have been killed who have died from their body fluids various other samples what is the chemicals that have caused the cause the deaths and what is the nature of these chemicals the composition of the chemicals and from that we can also find the traces if you check all this then you also know in some sense the signature of the chemicals and the signature of the chemicals tells you where it has been manufactured was it a part of the stock that Syria had or is it a part of the stock that for instance Gaddafi had before he was overthrown. So all this needs to be taken into account even fix what is a plausible scenario at the moment we don't even have a clear picture whether it is as the Russians and the Syrians have said that the rebels were hoarding chemicals and that was hit and that has caused the disaster and this has nothing to do with any chemical weapons being dropped there this is one scenario others what the Americans are claiming that the serene based chemical weapons have been used so this is the second scenario which which has been there are the two contending scenarios if you will. So that needs to be investigated there is absolutely no basis at the moment for OPCW or anybody else without an investigation to come to any conclusions that is that is one and the chemical weapons treaty is very clear on this that is OPCW's jurisdiction to check and do the fact finding and that has to be allowed before we come to conclusions if it does then OPCW by itself cannot take action in the sole body that can take action if there is a treaty violation would then be the Security Council where this report has to go and the Security Council is to decide it cannot be decided by any one nation state. So the two superpowers Russia and US they they have had an understanding in Syria they so that they don't attack each other's forces or bases what do you think will happen to that understanding now. I think this is the major escalation that has taken place it appeared that both later stages of Obama as well as initial phases of Trump that there was an understanding between the US military and the Russian military forces because both were active in Syria they were both active against perhaps different players Americans were largely concentrating they said on ISIS or IS while the major threat to Aleppo Damascus was from Al Qaeda and those forces were being engaged by the Syrian army as well as the Russian Air Force. So given this they had to coordinate that they would not inadvertently attack each other say Russia has deployed serious anti-aircraft weapons over there they have various radar based systems which track aircraft. So for them to know that this is an American military aircraft which is in Syrian airspace going to bomb XYZ is important so they don't inadvertently think it's a Turkish Air Force plane which then they would not allow. So all this had been fixed on the ground and it appeared that there was a minimum amount of military coordination taking place. I think this is going to really put paid to that though it is said that the Americans had warned the Russians that this air force would be bombed so they had pulled their assets out of the place probably also the Syrian government had pulled a lot of its assets out of the place but nevertheless it will be accounted as a serious breach of the current agreement and the fact that Russia will now henceforth think of every intrusion of American air force in the Syrian airspace as a possible attack on the Syrian government which they would protect they makes the task of military coordination between the two sides much more difficult and much more dangerous let's not forget that if there is a military clash between the two air forces over Syria that this really raises the possibility of much much worse things happening. It could be a resumption of hostilities in Ukraine over Crimea it could be various other places so what we are really doing is setting the you know clock back to what were the conditions during Cold War where the two nuclear powers came a number of times to nearly a nuclear exchange so I think it's really setting the clock back I really don't see any way that you can really pull back from this very easily. This is all the time we have today at NewsClick thank you for joining us.