TEHRAN, June 28 (Mehr News Agency)-- Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi here on Saturday regretted that the international community had adopted silence towards Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the 1980-88 war against Iran, and hoped that advocates of the former Iraqi regime would be prosecuted.

In a message marking the anniversary of Iraq's chemical bombing of Sardasht, Kharrazi said Iran's enemies have spared no effort to harm the Islamic Republic ever since the triumph of 1979 Islamic Revolution, stressing that arming the Iraqi regime was part of those plots.

 

"They believed that by supporting the former Iraqi regime and arming it with modern military hardware they could overthrow the Islamic establishment when the Iraqi war against Iran had just started."

 

Iraq used chemical bombs against Iranians as the last option when it faced with the resistance of Iranian combatants, he said, stressing that this had inflicted severe damage on the Iranian society.   

 

He also said that Iran, as a major victim of chemical weapons, will always struggle to fight against chemical weapons

 

He said Iran joined the international conventions banning the use of chemical weapons in order to prove its commitment to the effect.

 

Elsewhere in his remarks, Kharrazi said the Western media had purposefully failed to cover the developments, and called on Iranian institutions to reveal the crimes perpetrated by the Baghdad regime against Iranians to the world.

 

About 130 people were martyred and another 5,000 wounded during a chemical bombardment of the town of Sardasht, in the northwestern province of West Azarbaijan, in 1987.

 

 

NP/AA/ST

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MNA