Earlier in the day, Price noted, the United Nations and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons released the results of a probe into chemical weapons attacks in Syria in 2014 and 2015 that implicate the Syrian government and Daesh terrorist group.
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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime may still have access to chemical weapons, despite multiple promises to destroy the entire stockpile, according to a new report.
Chapter 7 deals with sanctions and authorization of military force by the Security Council.
Quoting a confidential report, the website says US and European inspectors have repeatedly found traces of nerve agents in Syrian labs and that the government’s stories have changed several times.
According to the report, obtained by The Associated Press, the JIM found the Syrian government responsible for two chlorine attacks in Idlib governorate, one in Talmenes on April 21, 2014 and one in Sarmin on March 16, 2015.
The Council will meet on August 30 to discuss the JIM report and debate action that diplomats said could range from a statement of condemnation to referral to the International Criminal Court or additional sanctions.
Alexis Lamek said the U.N. Security Council must take action against the perpetrators following Wednesday’s report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism.
But many diplomats say Russian Federation would be unlikely to back such a move, despite the JIM’s strong findings of chemical weapons use in the three cases.
The Syrian government has long accused opposition fighters of using chemical weapons.
The 24-member team said there was insufficient information to reach a conclusion in three other cases and recommended that there be no further investigation of those suspected attacks.
The UN Security Council will discuss the report next week and is likely to impose sanctions on Assad’s regime.
Previous reports have found indications that people in Syria were exposed to chemical weapons, including deadly sarin gas.
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”.
“The Secretariat considers that numerous explanations provided by the Syrian Arab Republic are not scientifically or technically plausible”, OPCW Director General Ahmet Uzumcu said in the report.
This development is particularly newsworthy because, in 2013, Assad vowed to stop the use of chemical weapons against his own citizens during the country’s ongoing bloody civil war.
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Ms Power said the United States expected Jim to continue investigating the remaining confirmed cases and any others referred by the OPCW fact-finding mission.
