UN Syria report likely to confirm chemical gas use - Ban Ki-moon

A report by UN chemical weapons experts will likely confirm that poison gas was used in an August 21st attack on Damascus suburbs that killed hundreds of people, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon saidtoday.

“I believe that the report will be an overwhelming, overwhelming report that chemical weapons (were) used, even though I cannot publicly say at this time before I receive this report,” Mr Ban said at a UN meeting.

He was referring to an eagerly awaited report by the UN expert team led by Ake Sellstrom of Sweden.

UN spokesman Farhan Haq said that Mr Ban does not have Sellstrom’s report yet.

Mr Ban has said previously, however, that he was in contact with Sellstrom and had urged him to expedite his conclusions. France’s UN ambassador, Gerard Araud, told reporters Monday is the tentative date for Mr Ban to present Sellstrom’s report to the Security Council and other UN member states.

Mr Ban also said today that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad “has committed many crimes against humanity,” though he did not say whether it was Assad’s forces or rebels who used the chemical weapons in the Aigist 21st attack.

While Sellstrom’s report will not explicitly pin the blame on either side, diplomats say the facts they gathered could suggest which side in the 2-1/2 year civil war was responsible. The United States and other Western powers blame forces loyal to Assad for the attack. Russian president Vladimir Putin asserts there is “every reason to believe” it was carried out by rebels.

Two Western diplomats said they strongly expect Sellstrom’s report will confirm the US view that sarin gas was used in the attack, which the United States says killed over 1,400 people, many of them children. The diplomats added they expected the report would indirectly implicate the Syrian government.

They declined to elaborate, but the details that the report could include are types of weapons used and trajectories. Sellstrom's report could become a bargaining chip in talks between Russia and Western powers on conditions for Syria to give up its chemical weapons and the terms of a UN Security Council resolution on the matter.

Meanwhile US secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have agreed to push for an international conference aimed at ending Syria's civil war.

After meeting the UN envoy on Syria in Geneva, where they are trying to confirm a Russian plan to remove Syria’s chemical weapons and avert US military action, Mr Lavrov and Mr Kerry said they agreed to try and make progress on a broader effort to end a conflict that has divided the Middle East and world powers.

They would meet again in about two weeks, around September 28th during the UN General Assembly in New York, and hoped progress in Geneva in the coming day on a chemical weapons disarmament deal would help revive plans for peace conference.

“We are committed to trying to work together, beginning with this initiative on the chemical weapons, in hopes that those efforts could pay off and bring peace and stability to a war-torn part of the world,” Mr Kerry told a joint news briefing.

Mr Kerry cautioned after meeting Mr Lavrov last night that the US could still carry out a threat to attack president Bashar al-Assad in retaliation for a poison gas attack last month if Washington was not satisfied with

UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who also represents the Arab League, said working to remove chemical weapons from Syria would form an important element in efforts to hold new peace talks, following an earlier failed attempt at Geneva last year.

As the diplomacy continued in Switzerland, Dr Assad’s forces were on the offensive against rebel-held suburbs of Damascus, opposition activists and residents said.

Warplanes and artillery were bombing and shelling, notably in the Barzeh neighbourhood, where activists said there were also clashes on the ground.

"It seems that the government is back to its old routine after the past couple of weeks of taking a defensive posture from a US strike," said one resident of central Damascus, who opposes Dr Assad. She heard jets overhead and artillery in action.

Damascus formally applied to join a global poison gas ban - a move welcomed today by Russian president Vladimir Putin. He called it “an important step towards the resolution of the Syrian crisis” and added: “This confirms the serious intention of our Syrian partners to follow this path.”

China, too, hailed Dr Assad’s decision, as did Iran, Dr Assad’s key ally in a regional confrontation with sectarian overtones between Shia Tehran and Sunni Muslim Arab states.

But Mr Kerry has underscored that Washington could still attack: “This is not a game,” he said last night.

The talks were part of a diplomatic push that prompted president Barack Obama to put on hold his plans for US air strikes in response to a chemical weapons attack on August 21st.

Moscow’s proposal also spared Obama facing a vote in Congress on military action that he appeared likely to lose at this stage. The United States and its allies say Dr Assad’s forces carried out the attack with sarin nerve gas, killing more than 1,400 people.

Mr Putin and Dr Assad have blamed rebel forces. The United Nations said it received a document from Syria on joining the global anti-chemical weapons treaty, a move Dr Assad promised as part of a deal to avoid US air strikes.

Dr Assad told Russian state television in an interview broadcast last night that he would finalise plans to abandon his chemical arsenal only when the United States stops threatening to attack him.

Mr Lavrov said yesterday: “We proceed from the fact that the solution of this problem will make unnecessary any strike on the Syrian Arab Republic.”

Along with other world powers, Moscow and Washington see the instability in

Syria as fuelling wider security threats, but differ sharply on how to respond. Western powers say that Dr Assad is a tyrant who should be overthrown.