Chlorine use as a weapon is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which Syria joined in 2013, under pressure from Russian Federation.
Advertisement
The team said evidence in three other cases suggested government responsibility, but was not conclusive. They determined that Syrian troops used toxic gas on two occasions, while ISIS has used mustard gas on at least one occasion.
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.
Churkin said it was important the report concluded that Islamic State militants had used mustard gas “because all talk we heard about any use of chemical weapons was an effort to ascribe things to the Syrian government”. Both cases involved the use of chlorine. Kenneth Ward, the American representative to the OPCW, said that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had launched “a calculated campaign of intransigence and obfuscation, of deception, and of defiance”, and added that the samples were “indicative of production, weaponization, and storage of [chemical warfare] agents by the Syrian military that has never been acknowledged by the Syrian government”.
France’s ambassador to the UN, Alexis Lamek, also called for the Security Council to take action. “If they were to veto such a resolution they would need to justify the use of chemical weapons”, one senior diplomat said.
The UN’s Security Council (UNSC) is due to discuss the report on Tuesday. “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. It also said DAESH was “the only entity with the ability, capability, motive and the means to use sulfur mustard” gas in Marea in Aleppo governorate near the Turkish border on August 21, 2015. At the time, DAESH militants were attacking opposition groups.
There was insufficient information to reach a conclusion in the final three of the nine cases that the panel has been investigating for the past year.
JIM is expected to continue its investigation into the remaining confirmed cases, as well as any other confirmed chemical weapons uses referred to the JIM by the OPCW Fact Finding Mission. “The council will have to act”, he said.
Advertisement
Syria became a signatory to the convention in 2013 after agreeing to destroy its chemical weapons production facilities and declared chemical weapons stockpile, which consisted of the agents to produce Sarin and mustard agent. “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.
