Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Revealed: Government let British company export nerve gas chemicals to Syria

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-government-let-british-company-export-nerve-gas-chemicals-to-syria-8793642.html
 
 
Revealed: Government let British company export nerve gas chemicals to Syria
 
UK accused of ‘breath-taking laxity’ over export licence for potassium 
fluoride and sodium fluoride
 
CAHAL MILMO , ANDY MCSMITH , NIKHIL KUMAR   MONDAY 02 SEPTEMBER 2013
 
The Government was accused of “breathtaking laxity” in its arms controls 
last night after it emerged that officials authorised the export to 
Syria of two chemicals capable of being used to make a nerve agent such 
as sarin a year ago.
 
The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, will today be asked by MPs to 
explain why a British company was granted export licences for the 
dual-use substances for six months in 2012 while Syria’s civil war was 
raging and concern was rife that the regime could use chemical weapons 
on its own people. The disclosure of the licences for potassium fluoride 
and sodium fluoride, which can both be used as precursor chemicals in 
the manufacture of nerve gas, came as the US Secretary of State John 
Kerry said the United States had evidence that sarin  gas was used in 
last month’s atrocity in Damascus.
 
Mr Kerry announced that traces of the nerve agent, found in hair and 
blood samples taken from victims of the attack in the Syrian capital 
which claimed more than 1,400 lives, were part of a case being built by 
the Obama administration for military intervention as it launched a 
full-scale political offensive on Sunday to persuade a sceptical 
Congress to approve a military strike against Syria.
 
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills insisted that 
although the licences were granted to an unnamed UK chemical company in 
January 2012, the substances were not sent to Syria before the permits 
were eventually revoked last July in response to tightened European 
Union sanctions.
 
In a previously unpublicised letter to MPs last year, Mr Cable 
acknowledged that his officials had authorised the export of an 
unspecified quantity of the chemicals in the knowledge that they were 
listed on an international schedule of chemical weapon precursors.
 
Critics of the Business Secretary, whose department said it had accepted 
assurances from the exporting company that the chemicals would be used 
in the manufacture of metal window frames and shower enclosures, said it 
appeared the substances had only stayed out of Syria by chance.
 
The shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna told The Independent: “It 
will be a relief that the chemicals concerned were never actually 
delivered. But, in light of the fact the Assad regime had already been 
violently oppressing internal dissent for many months by the beginning 
of 2012 and the intelligence now indicates use of chemical weapons on 
multiple occasions, a full explanation is needed as to why the export of 
these chemicals was approved in the first place.”
 
The Labour MP Thomas Docherty, a member of the Commons Arms Export 
Controls Committee, will today table parliamentary questions demanding 
to know why the licences were granted and to whom.
 
He said: “This would seem to be a case of breath-taking laxity – the 
Government has had a very lucky escape indeed that these chemicals were 
not sent to Syria.
 
“What was Mr Cable’s department doing authorising the sale of chemicals 
which by their own admission had a dual use as precursors for chemical 
weapons at a time when the Syria’s war was long under way?”
 
The licences for the two chemicals were granted on 17 and 18 January 
last year for “use in industrial processes” after being assessed by 
Department for Business officials to judge if “there was a clear risk 
that they might be used for internal repression or be diverted for such 
an end”, according to the letter sent by Mr Cable to the arms controls 
committee.
 
Mr Cable said: “The licences were granted because at the time there were 
no grounds for refusal.”
 
Although the export deal was outlawed by the EU on 17 June last year in 
a package of sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the 
licences were not revoked until 30 July. Chemical weapons experts said 
that although the two substances have a variety of uses such as the 
fluoridation of drinking water, sodium and potassium fluoride are also 
key to producing the chemical effect which makes a nerve agent such as 
sarin so toxic.
 
Western intelligence has long suspected the Syrian regime of using front 
companies to divert dual-use materials imported for industrial purposes 
into its weapons programmes. It is believed that chemical weapons 
including sarin have been used in the Syrian conflict on 14 occasions 
since 2012.
 
Mr Cable’s department last night insisted it was satisfied that the 
export licence was correctly granted. A spokesman said: “The UK 
Government operates one of the most rigorous arms export control regimes 
in the world.
 
“The exporter and recipient company demonstrated that the chemicals were 
for a legitimate civilian end-use – which was for metal finishing of 
aluminium profiles used in making aluminium showers and aluminium window 
frames.”
-- 
Namib
.....
αἱ ψυχαὶ ὀσμῶνται καθ᾽ Ἅιδην (Eraclito)

 http:/
 
Amava i palestinesi, e odiava fortemente gli israeliani, particolarmente i coloni. Sperava che un giorno lo “Stato” di Israele venisse distrutto dagli arabi. [...] 
Odiava il sionismo. Era consapevole che occorre distruggere lo Stato sionista, che e’ illegale. Sognava che un giorno 1.5 milioni di palestinesi si sarebbero sollevati in una lotta armata contro i 5 milioni di sionisti, e avrebbero liberato dall’occupazione sionista la Galilea ed altre regioni. 
 
 Arrigoni è ben più di un “blogger”: ma quando i giornalisti se ne sono andati da Gaza, lui è rimasto là, e aveva un blog. Sono sempre i migliori che si ficcano nei guai. Mi unisco alla preghiera dei palestinesi che lo vogliono vivo e libero.
 
AMEN!

 hemical-stockpile-to-Tehran---to-avert-US-attack
 
Beh, questo sarebbe "cane morde uomo"; la notizia dell'Ind., "uomo morde 
cane".


Ideona. Un governo a guida dei Fratelli Musulmani in Russia, un altro in Italia. E subito saranno meno abominevoli. Si contrasta anche il pogrom anti-islamico, e si possono fare pressioni su Israele, per avere finalmente uno Stato laico! 

 Ma noh. Sono i kommies che la rendono in modo strumentale e scorretto
 
E come l'avrei "usata" io? :)


 Ma noh. Sono i kommies che la rendono in modo strumentale e scorretto.
 
più asettico di un copincolla non esiste niente al mondo. Il problema è che siete stati beccati a letto col nemico, e adesso è un po' più difficile farne la millesima copia di Hitle. All'originale almeno i britt non regalavano lo zyklon

 Fermandoti al primo pseudo-dato disponibile. Lavrov non avrebbe fatto di meglio,
 
Ma se l'UK nemmeno è disponibile ad attaccare la Siria...


 E non lo dimenticheranno neanche i siriani.
 
sempre che ne rimanga vivo qualcuno. 

 Syria
 
il mondo è costellato di errori, se confermato, questo può essere uno di 
quello, sarebbe interessante sapere cosa combinano altri paesi ben più 
attivi in fatto di controllo statale del commercio delle armi...ovvero 
laddove una fornitura sottende sempre un chiaro disegno politico