U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley battled Russian officials at the U.N. on Tuesday after the Trump administration accused Russia of turning a blind eye to new chemical attacks in Syria.
“We have nothing to hide,” Vasily Nebenzia, the Russian representative at the United Nations, insisted at a Security Council meeting that was convened quickly Tuesday afternoon after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denounced Russia.
Nebenzia cast doubt on the accuracy of the newest reports, while reiterating the Russian government’s position that past investigations into Syrian President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons had been corrupted by western powers.
The meeting took place as Tillerson and other allies gathered in France to launch a plan to investigate the attacks without going through the United Nations. He called instead for a “new international investigative body” to “rise above these differences” in reviewing the alleged incidents.
“Russia consistently underscores the importance of the most serious approach to the matter of production and use of chemical weapons,” Nebenzia said through a U.N. translator.
But Haley mocked the proposal as a “distract[ion]” from the French-led effort. “Russia should look in the mirror before bringing us into the security council to talk about chemical weapons,” she said. “When Russia doesn’t like the facts, they try and distract the conversation.”
Nebenzia also attacked the previous U.N. investigative panel, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism.
“The JIM, which has ceased to exist, has caused the investigation to collapse,” Nebenzia said. “The investigation, which from a scientific, technical point of view, was a complete failure and it became a mechanism for political manipulation.”
Haley countered that Russia, which vetoed an effort to allow the JIM to continue working when its international mandate expired in November, simply didn’t like the results of the probe.
“When the investigators found ISIS to be responsible [for chemical weapons attacks], Russia was fine,’ she said. “When the investigators found that the Assad regime used them, Russia tried to find any excuse to poke holes in the investigation and threw up smoke to question the finding. That is not how independent investigations work. You don’t get to question the findings when they don’t go your way.”
She rejected the Russian proposal for a new investigative body out of hand, calling instead for the renewal of the previous panel, and once again blamed Russia for the latest incidents.
“It’s no coincidence that this week’s chlorine gas attack reportedly happened in the exact place where the Assad regime is trying to take over militarily,” Haley said. “Russia is complicit in the Assad regime’s atrocities. Will the Russian federation say anything at all today about the suffering caused by Assad’s barbaric tactics? Will they hold Assad to account? Of course not. They never do.”
