Upon instructions from my Government, I have the honour to draw your attention to the extremely serious threats made by senior officials in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France to use military force against my country, Syria, under the pretext of the use of toxic chemical materials in “Duma”.

As you are aware, the Syrian Government sent an official letter yesterday, 10 April 2018, to the Director General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), requesting him to send a fact-finding mission team as soon as possible to the alleged location in “Duma” to investigate this alleged incident. In its letter, my Government emphasized its readiness to provide all necessary assistance to that mission, to guarantee the safety of its members and to facilitate interviews and the collection of samples, in accordance with the terms of reference of the OPCW.

The false accusations made by the Governments of these three Permanent Members of the Security Council against my country, Syria, prior to the fact-finding mission visit to Syria, prove that there is a deliberate intention and a prior decision by those Governments to launch a military aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is required today, under Article 99 of the Charter of the United Nations, to exercise his powers to alert the Security Council to the seriousness of such threats and that such possible military aggression will threaten international peace and security. The Security Council is also required today to exercise its mandates under Article 1, paragraph 1, and Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter, in maintaining international peace and security, the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace and in ensuring that all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State.

I should be grateful if the present letter could be circulated as a document of the Security Council.