SYRIA has accused Western nations of lying about its use of banned munitions and of politicising the work of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Bassam Sabbagh, Syria’s permanent representative to the United Nations, told the UN security council on Wednesday that the country has never used toxic substances, noting that it is a signatory to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.

It joined the treaty in 2013 and had co-operated with the UN and OPCW to destroy its chemical stockpile, Mr Sabbagh said.

In mid-2014 the weapons watchdog confirmed that Syria had destroyed 94 per cent of its entire stockpile, and in January 2016 said the full disposal process was complete.

But Mr Sabbagh said that Western countries were continuing to spread deliberate misinformation in spite of this, accusing them of attempting to manipulate the technical work of the OPCW in a bid to further an agenda for regime change.

Western nations increased pressure on Syria during Wednesday’s session in New York, where a UN official said that Damascus had failed to clear up 20 outstanding issues over its chemical weapons stockpile which arose eight years ago.

US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the world should not be fooled by Syria’s “deliberate delays” and obstructions.

French ambassador Nicolas De Riviere accused Syria of continuing to use chemical weapons, but provided no evidence to back such claims.

Mr Sabbagh asserted that Syria was fully co-operating, however, and said it had already pointed out inaccurate information contained in OPCW reports.

Syria has claimed that the watchdog is being deployed as “a weapon of war,” used as “political blackmail to serve the agenda” of those seeking to oust the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

In 2018 the organisation’s remit was changed, granting it the power to apportion blame for alleged attacks rather than simply establishing whether chemicals had been used or not.

Its so-called Douma dossier, which examined an alleged chemical attack in Syria in 2018, has been mired in controversy after it inexplicably excluded a dissenting engineering report which cast doubt on the Western narrative.

The dissenting report said it was highly probable that cylinders had been manually placed at two locations rather than being dropped from above by army helicopters, as the Western narrative suggested.

An OPCW whistleblower said that key information had been deliberately withheld and that the report was manipulated to fit a predetermined outcome of blaming the Syrian government for using chemical weapons against its own people.

Engineer Ian Henderson, who was part of the initial team that investigated the Douma incident, told a session of the UN security council last year that there was no evidence that a chemical attack had even taken place.

The late Robert Fisk, a veteran journalist who worked extensively in the Middle East, found that residents of Douma were perplexed at reports of the incident which allegedly left 43 people dead.

Hospital workers explained that people were treated for dust inhalation, not the effects of exposure to chemicals.