WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says it has sanctioned a Syrian technologies company that is boosting the Syrian government's ballistic missile program.
The State Department said in a statement Thursday that the Organization for Technological Industries has a primary mission of importing advanced strategic technologies for surface-to-surface missile and rocket programs in Syria.
The government says the firm is also involved in furthering Syria's ballistic missile program.
The spokesman for the National Security Council, Ned Price, says that the order to sanction the technologies company "is the first time the United States is sanctioning specific Syrian officials in connection with Syria's violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention."
Price says, "we condemn in the strongest possible terms the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons."
