Evidence shows chemical weapons used in two attacks came from the Syrian government's stockpiles, a panel of U.N. investigators said Wednesday in a new report that needled world powers as deserving some of the blame for the country's atrocities because of their inaction.
The
human rights experts said they confirmed the use of chemical weapons,
specifically sarin, in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on Aug. 21, an attack in
which the U.S. government said 1,400 people died and that prompted a
U.S.-Russian agreement to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons by mid-2014. Their
report said they also confirmed the use of sarin in an attack on March 19 of
last year in the village of Khan al Assal outside the city of Aleppo.
In
Ghouta, the report said, significant quantities of sarin were used in a
well-planned attack targeting civilian-inhabited areas, causing mass
casualties. It said the evidence indicated that the perpetrators "likely
had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military, as well as
the expertise and equipment necessary to manipulate safely large amount of
chemical agents."
The
chemical agents used in the attack in Khan Al-Assal, it said, "bore the
same unique hallmarks" as those used in Ghouta.
The
panel's experts identified more than 40 government-run detention centres with
documented torture cases and said widespread attacks and sieges on civilian
areas in Syria by pro-government forces are leading to mass casualties,
malnutrition and starvation. They said rebels have committed war crimes,
including murder, executions, torture, hostage-taking, enforced disappearances,
rape and using child soldiers.
But the
commission chaired by Brazilian diplomat and scholar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro also
concluded the five permanent U.N. Security Council members — Britain, China, France,
Russia and the U.S. — have failed to act on all of Syria's "grave
violations" that threaten international peace and security.
Syria's
main allies, Russia and China, have repeatedly blocked proposals by the West
before the Security Council, the U.N.'s most powerful arm.
"Such
inaction has provided the space for the proliferation of actors in the Syrian
Arab Republic, each pursuing its own agenda and contributing to the
radicalization and escalation of violence," their report said. "The
Security Council bears this responsibility."
The
panel, authorized by the U.N.'s 47-nation Human Rights Council in Geneva, has
previously concluded that it believes the Syrian government is committing a
crime against humanity by making people systematically vanish, and that rebels
have also been making their opponents disappear and running secret prisons.
The
report Wednesday recommended that countries with influence in Syria,
particularly the permanent Security Council members, exert more pressure
"to end the violence and to initiate all-inclusive negotiations for a
sustainable political transition process in the country" and also refer
the conflict for prosecution, possibly the International Criminal Court at The
Hague, Netherlands. AP
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