RIYADH: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on Tuesday rejected a Russian proposal to place Syria’s chemical weapons under international control, saying it would not end the bloodshed in Syria.
“We’ve heard of the initiative,” Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa told a news conference after a meeting of GCC members states.
“It’s all about chemical weapons, but doesn’t stop the spilling of the blood of the Syrian people,” he said.
The GCC, composed of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, insists that Syrian President Bashar Assad be punished for using chemical weapons against his own people.
The Russian proposal, accepted by Damascus, aims to prevent the United States launching an attack on Syria to punish it for a chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of civilians.
Khalifa called for “appropriate deterrent measures against those who committed this crime” and said the chemical attack required “the United Nations and the international community, represented by the Security Council, to shoulder its responsibility.”
Also on Tuesday, the GCC also denounced the Hezbollah for interfering in the Syrian crisis.
"As GCC strongly condemns the blatant interference of Lebanese Hezbollah in the Syrian crisis and its consequent killing of innocent civilians, it considers that Hezbollah's participation in shedding the blood of the brotherly Syrian people revealed the nature of this party and its real objectives which surpassed the borders of Lebanon and Arab homeland," said the GCC General Secretariat in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
The Council also stressed that "Illegal interventions of Hezbollah and the heinous practices of its militias in Syria, would harm its interests in the GCC's member countries, and that the GCC Ministerial Council decided to consider action against any members of Hezbollah in the GCC countries, both in their residency or their financial and trade transactions,"
"GCC also calls on the Lebanese government to assume its responsibilities towards the behavior of Hezbollah and its illegal and inhuman practices both in Syria and the region." the statement said.
• Additional input from Reuters and SPA
