Speaking on condition of anonymity, several UN diplomats said on Thursday that the vote on the draft text proposed by the United Stated was scheduled for Friday.
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The panel is expected to “identify to the greatest extent feasible individuals, entities, groups, or governments who were perpetrators, organizers, sponsors or otherwise involved in the use of chemicals as weapons, including chlorine or any other toxic chemical, in the Syrian Arab Republic”.
The resolution was finalised in a one-on-one meeting between Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, in Malaysia, where Kerry was attending meetings as part of a regional forum.
The United States has been pressing for the council to ensure accountability for the growing number of alleged chlorine attacks in Syria, many reportedly using barrel bombs dropped from helicopters.
A fact-finding mission by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found in September 2014 “with a high degree of confidence, that chlorine was used as a weapon systematically and repeatedly in three villages in northern Syria”.
The use of chlorine and other toxic chemicals as a weapon in Syria has been previously documented. But neither the organization nor the United Nations has a mandate to determine responsibility.
According to one council diplomat, the final draft asks U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in coordination with OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu, to submit to the Security Council within 20 days recommendations to establish an “OPCW-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism”.
A veto-wielding member of the council, Russian Federation last year blocked a key resolution on referring Syria to the global Criminal Court for war crimes but it later backed a measure on boosting humanitarian aid.
Earlier this year, council members heard graphic accounts from Syrian doctors of chlorine gas attacks in March on the village of Sarmin that left six dead including three children.
“What we are trying to do is get beyond the mere finding of the fact that it may have been used and actually find out who used it and designate accountability for its use”, Kerry told reporters here.
“For now we don’t have a joint approach on how specifically we can do it, given the standoff between various players on the ground, including armed units of the Syrian opposition”, Lavrov said late Wednesday.
Following a chemical weapon attack on a Damascus suburb that killed hundreds of civilians in August 2013, the council ordered the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons program.
At the end of October 2014, the OPCW reported that almost 98 percent of chemical weapons removed from Syria had been destroyed.
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Chlorine is not officially considered a warfare agent and was not among the chemicals declared by Syria, but its use as a weapon is illegal.
