No military action

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Sept 2, CMC – The St. Vincent and the Grenadines government Monday said it was “alarmed” at the recent allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Syria and remains “deeply concerned with the spiralling humanitarian crisis in the Middle East.

But the government said it considers any external military action to be “premature”.

The United States has said it had irrefutable evidence that the chemical weapons were used by the Bashar al-Assad administration resulting in the deaths of nearly, 1500 people including more than 400 children last month.

The Obama administration has promised to military retaliation and is awaiting a confidence vote by the US Congress for its impending action.

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves told a news conference that his administration is concerned at “the mounting death toll” in the two-year civil war.

“The reports of the use of chemical weapons by combatants in the war, if independently verified, would represent an abhorrent and reprehensible development in the Syrian civil war,” Gonsalves said, noting that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the Chemicals Weapons Convention (CWC), both of which ban the use of chemical weapons.

He said the island was also a party to other protocols banning the use of poisonous or other gases and bacterial methods of warfare.

“As such we stand unambiguously with the civilised nations of the world in condemning any and all uses of such weapons as a gross violation of international war.”