Wiesenthal Center urges probe of EU grant to Syrian chemical weapons program

The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent a letter to European Union vice president and foreign affairs representative Catherine Ashton on Wednesday, urging an investigation into revelations that Syria used EU aid to develop chemical weapons.

Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations, Shimon
Samuels, expressed outrage to learn from the Washington Post that “a 2010 European Union grant for technical assistance to Syria of $14.6 million was in fact used to expand Damascus’ chemical weapons program.”

Samuels noted that “in 1991 and 1995, our center exposed over 200 European companies involved in sales of chemical and biological precursors to Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Two years ago, we identified 140 of those as recidivist, maintaining supplies to Iran.”

Samuels stressed that “on the one hand, the EU has imposed a sanctions regime on such companies. On the other, the EU is, apparently, itself an indirect contributor to stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of genocidists.”

The center suggested that “until appropriate measures are taken, the EU
seems hardly equipped to negotiate with a now proven duplicitous Iran or as a member of the Quartet for Middle East peace.”