Arms control, chemical weapons and a safer world

Up till now, chemical weapons inspectors who work under the auspices of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(OPCW) were in a way hamstrung.

For example, they are allowed to send teams to an alleged chemical weapons attack. They could also take samples. Lastly, they were allowed to determine whether indeed a chemical weapons incident had occurred.

Strangely however, whatever evidence they came up with, they were not allowed to point the finger at a particular country or non-state actor as the perpetrator.

Ordinarily, this was like having a detective investigate a killing, only to conclude that yes indeed, murder most foul has been committed, but then being unable to name the killer.

OPCW, the world's foremost chemical weapons watchdog, has now granted itself new powers to assign blame for attacks, despite protests by Russia.

Britain successfully argued that new powers were needed to deal with repeated chemical attacks in Syria.