The report’s results set the stage for a Security Council showdown between the five veto-wielding powers, likely pitting Russian Federation and China against the United States, Britain and France over whether sanctions should be imposed. The U.S. -led Counter-ISIL coalition has placed a high priority on targeting ISIL’s chemical weapons capabilities, including by capturing one of its chemical weapons manufacturing leaders in March 2016 and using information gained from him to launch airstrikes to degrade ISIL’s ability to use such weapons.
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“We’ve got a test case just over the border in Iraq about what the consequences are for the United States implementing a regime-change policy and trying to impose a military solution on the situation”, Earnest said.
The director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ahmet Uzumcu, wrote in a summary of a classified report that most of the 122 samples that the OPCW collected at multiple sites in Syria “indicate potentially undeclared chemical weapons-related activities”.
The NSC statement went on to accuse the regime of violating the Chemical Weapons Convention and a United Nations resolution.
The findings were made despite a pledge to abandon chemical weapons in 2013. Those measures usually mean sanctions, and Chapter 7 can be militarily enforced.
Russia, a close ally of Syria, has blocked sanctions and other council action against Bashar Assad’s government, but Moscow did support the establishment of the JIM. However, weaponized chlorine is still considered a chemical weapon and its use is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention that the US-Russia deal compelled Syria to be a party to, thereby making Syria’s use of the substance against civilians a violation of the agreement. “Without accountability, the cycle of abuses in Syria by all parties to the conflict, whether by chemical or conventional weapons, will continue unabated”, he said.
But Churkin repeatedly sidestepped questions about the team’s conclusion that the Syrian government used chlorine gas in two attacks, reiterating that the report is “very technical”, “quite complicated” and needs study. At the time, DAESH militants were attacking opposition groups. Power said the United States expects the JIM to continue investigating the remaining confirmed cases and any others referred by the OPCW fact-finding mission.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) Russia’s U.N. ambassador said Thursday there doesn’t have to be a confrontation with the United States over a report that blames the Syrian government and Islamic State militants for carrying out chemical attacks in the conflict-torn country.
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Image: A wide view of the Security Council. “It is now impossible to deny that the Syrian regime has repeatedly used industrial chlorine as a weapon against its own people”, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
