The UN Security Council has been meeting to discuss the findings of a confidential report which has confirmed that Syria’s Assad Government has been using chemical weapons on its own people.
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The panel found that the Syrian regime had dropped chemical weapons on two villages in northwestern Idlib province: Talmenes on April 21, 2014 and Sarmin on March 16, 2015.
However, Russia, a close Syrian ally, and China have previously protected the Syrian government from council action by blocking several resolutions, including a bid to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court.
“Clearly there is a smoking gun”. “It contains no names, no specifics, no fingerprints”.
“There are a number of questions which have to be clarified before we accept all the findings of the report”, Churkin said. The report also found that the Islamic State group, which is already under United Nations sanctions, was behind at least one chemical attack.
“I can’t specify or get ahead of where the council’s going to be”, she said.
The panel of inquiry, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), for the first time pointed the finger of blame at the Assad regime for chemical weapons use after years of denial from Damascus. “It is incumbent on the council to act swiftly to show that when we put that Joint Investigative Mechanism in place we were serious about there being meaningful accountability”.
The use of chemical weapons violates a United Nations agreement with Syria in 2013 to destroy its chemical weapons.
France’s ambassador calls the chemical attacks a war crime and a crime against humanity, while the British ambassador said a “robust worldwide response” is essential.
A year-long United Nations and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inquiry, unanimously authorized by the 15-member Security Council, also found that Islamic State militants used sulphur mustard gas.
Virginia Gamba, who headed the inspection team, defended their methodology but conceded that it was hard to prove the use of chlorine, which is commercially available and evaporates quickly.
Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador, said it was too early to consider implementing a September 2013 Security Council resolution authorising sanctions that can be militarily enforced for any use of chemical weapons in Syria. They said the attacks involved sarin, mustard gas, VX nerve gas, chlorine, and 61 other toxic chemicals.
The Syrian Ambassador to the U.N., Bashar Jaafari, refuted the OPCW-UN report.
The report was “totally based on witnesses presented by terrorist armed groups”, Jaafari said. “Therefore, these conclusions lack any physical evidence”.
“Russia and China don t have a leg to stand on by continuing to obstruct the Security Council on Syria sanctions and ICC referral”, said Louis Charbonneau, UN director at Human Rights Watch.
“We need a resolution and we need a resolution with teeth”, said French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre on Tuesday.
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