UNITED NATIONS: The credibility of the United Nations Security Council is at stake as it meets to discuss possible sanctions against Syria for the use of chemical weapons against civilians, the head of the French mission to the United Nations said on Friday.
“If the Security Council is not able to unite on such a vital, literally, vital question of proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction against civilian population, then what?” said French UN Ambassador Francois Delattre.
“What is at stake here frankly is the credibility of the Security Council,” he told reporters.
Delattre said that beyond existing “clear evidence” that chemical weapons have been used in Syria against civilians, there are “converging indications that such weapons continue to be used.”
“On the scale of the threats to peace and security, we are at 10 here,” Delattre said. “The ‘doing nothing’ attitude or the ‘talking only’ attitude are not an option confronted with such a threat.”
The draft resolution seeks to blacklist 11 Syrian military commanders and officials and 10 government and related entities involved in the development and production of chemical weapons.
It calls for an asset freeze and travel ban for the individuals and entities across all UN member states.
Two diplomats told Reuters on Thursday it was likely that Russia, the largest international backer of the Syrian government of Bashar Assad, would veto the text.
US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said: “We’ve worked with the UK and France to make sure this resolution comes on board and then we’ll find out which countries have an excuse for chemical weapons and which ones are really going to say this is a problem.”
A joint inquiry by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that Syrian government forces were responsible for three chlorine gas attacks and that Daesh militants had used mustard gas, according to reports seen by Reuters last year.
Assad’s government has denied its forces have used chemical weapons.
The UN vote could coincide with talks between representatives of Assad’s government and his opponents with UN mediator Staffan de Mistura, which started on Thursday in Geneva.
Delattre said he saw no contradiction in raising the subject of sanctions on Syria as the Geneva talks were being held.
The nearly six-year-long conflict in Syria has killed at least 300,000 people and displaced millions, according to groups that monitor the war.
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UN Security Council credibility at stake on Syria sanctions talk -France
UN Security Council credibility at stake on Syria sanctions talk -France
Virtual museum preserves Sudan’s plundered heritage
CAIRO: Destroyed and looted in the early months of Sudan’s war, the national museum in Khartoum is now welcoming visitors virtually after months of painstaking effort to digitally recreate its collection.
At the museum itself, almost nothing remains of the 100,000 artefacts it had stored since its construction in the 1950s. Only the pieces too heavy for looters to haul off, like the massive granite statue of the Kush Pharaoh Taharqa and frescoes relocated from temples during the building of the Aswan Dam, are still present on site.
“The virtual museum is the only viable option to ensure continuity,” government antiquities official Ikhlass Abdel Latif said during a recent presentation of the project, carried out by the French Archaeological Unit for Sudanese Antiquities (SFDAS) with support from the Louvre and Britain’s Durham University.
When the museum was plundered following the outbreak of the war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023, satellite images showed trucks loaded with relics heading toward Darfur, the western region now totally controlled by the RSF.
Since then, searches for the missing artefacts aided by Interpol have only yielded meagre results.
“The Khartoum museum was the cornerstone of Sudanese cultural preservation — the damage is astronomical,” said SFDAS researcher Faiza Drici, but “the virtual version lets us recreate the lost collections and keep a clear record.”
Drici worked for more than a year to reconstruct the lost holdings in a database, working from fragments of official lists, studies published by researchers and photos taken during excavation missions.
Then graphic designer Marcel Perrin created a computer model that mimicked the museum’s atmosphere — its architecture, its lighting and the arrangement of its displays.
Online since January 1, the virtual museum now gives visitors a facsimile of the experience of walking through the institution’s galleries — reconstructed from photographs and the original plans — and viewing more than 1,000 pieces inherited from the ancient Kingdom of Kush.
It will take until the end of 2026, however, for the project to upload its recreation of the museum’s famed “Gold Room,” which had housed solid-gold royal jewelry, figurines and ceremonial objects stolen by looters.
In addition to the virtual museum’s documentary value, the catalogue reconstructed by SFDAS is expected to bolster Interpol’s efforts to thwart the trafficking of Sudan’s stolen heritage.
At the museum itself, almost nothing remains of the 100,000 artefacts it had stored since its construction in the 1950s. Only the pieces too heavy for looters to haul off, like the massive granite statue of the Kush Pharaoh Taharqa and frescoes relocated from temples during the building of the Aswan Dam, are still present on site.
“The virtual museum is the only viable option to ensure continuity,” government antiquities official Ikhlass Abdel Latif said during a recent presentation of the project, carried out by the French Archaeological Unit for Sudanese Antiquities (SFDAS) with support from the Louvre and Britain’s Durham University.
When the museum was plundered following the outbreak of the war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023, satellite images showed trucks loaded with relics heading toward Darfur, the western region now totally controlled by the RSF.
Since then, searches for the missing artefacts aided by Interpol have only yielded meagre results.
“The Khartoum museum was the cornerstone of Sudanese cultural preservation — the damage is astronomical,” said SFDAS researcher Faiza Drici, but “the virtual version lets us recreate the lost collections and keep a clear record.”
Drici worked for more than a year to reconstruct the lost holdings in a database, working from fragments of official lists, studies published by researchers and photos taken during excavation missions.
Then graphic designer Marcel Perrin created a computer model that mimicked the museum’s atmosphere — its architecture, its lighting and the arrangement of its displays.
Online since January 1, the virtual museum now gives visitors a facsimile of the experience of walking through the institution’s galleries — reconstructed from photographs and the original plans — and viewing more than 1,000 pieces inherited from the ancient Kingdom of Kush.
It will take until the end of 2026, however, for the project to upload its recreation of the museum’s famed “Gold Room,” which had housed solid-gold royal jewelry, figurines and ceremonial objects stolen by looters.
In addition to the virtual museum’s documentary value, the catalogue reconstructed by SFDAS is expected to bolster Interpol’s efforts to thwart the trafficking of Sudan’s stolen heritage.
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