Evidence that the sarin nerve agent was used in the chemical attack that killed more than 80 and injured hundreds of others in Syria’s northern province of Idlib last week has triggered awkward questions for the government over the part played by the UK in the Assad regime’s development of a chemical weapons programme.

Human rights groups and arms control campaigners have highlighted the government’s own admission that in the 80s the UK exported the chemicals necessary to make sarin to the Syrian regime. The UK also sold specialist equipment after the millennium which it now appears was diverted to the chemical weapons programme.

Allegations that the UK supplied potentially deadly chemicals to Syria were investigated by the Committees on Arms Export Controls (CAEC) which in 2013 wrote to then business secretary, Vince Cable, asking him to disclose the names of companies given licence approval between 2004 and 2012 to export to Syria chemicals that could be used to manufacture chemical weapons. Cable was criticised by the committees for refusing to disclose the names of the companies.

Sir John Stanley, chairman of the CAEC, said: “The effect of the business secretary’s refusal to date to disclose the names of the companies is to prevent the committees from taking evidence from them. This is a serious matter both for the four select committees who constitute the CAEC and for the House of Commons as a whole. I have therefore written to the business secretary asking him to reconsider his decision.”

MORE:    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/08/could-britain-have-sold-sarin-chemicals-assad-syria