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Kuwait Gives Syria Aid Effort a Short-Term Infusion Kuwait Gives Syria Aid Effort a Short-Term Infusion
(about 5 hours later)
GENEVA — Kuwait said on Thursday that it had given $300 million to the international relief effort for refugees and other victims of Syria’s civil war, bringing respite to cash-starved aid agencies but leaving unresolved the broader worries about how to address the escalating Syrian crisis. Britain and France have written separately to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations that there is credible information suggesting Syria’s government has used chemical weapons in the civil war on multiple occasions since last December, diplomats said Thursday.
Kuwait’s donation, $275 million to nine United Nations agencies and $25 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross, was announced at a press briefing in Geneva. The donation made good on a pledge Kuwait had given at the end of January, and was deposited just as several key aid agencies said their Syrian operations were nearly broke. The diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there had been an exchange of letters with the secretary general starting on March 25 about the information, which they would not reveal in detail. They spoke a day after Mr. Ban said that Syria had still not given a United Nations forensics team permission to enter the country, despite Syria’s own request last month for an investigation into its claim that insurgents had used chemical weapons in the war.
But even as they praised Kuwait for making the Arab world’s first major contribution to the international relief effort for Syria, United Nations agency executives were emphasizing that the money had provided only a “breathing space” and urged other states to honor their promises of aid. The assertions by Britain and France are stronger than that of the United States, which has said that it is assessing claims of chemical weapons use in Syria, but has not come to any conclusions. President Obama has said the use of such weapons in the war would constitute a “game changer” that could lead to an American military response.
Without Kuwait’s infusion, the World Food Program’s operations providing food support to refugees and more than two million people inside Syria would have run out of money at the end of next month, its chief operating officer, Amir Mahmoud Abdulla, said. The $40 million it will receive from Kuwait’s contribution would keep its operation going for just the first two weeks of June, he said. Israeli officials have also said they believe there is evidence that Syrian forces have used the weapons, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad is known to have stockpiled. But there has been no direct independent evidence presented to confirm the assertions.
That leaves international relief agencies still struggling to keep pace with needs that are rising rapidly as the conflict worsens. “The numbers are staggering and the needs are rising by the hour,” said António Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. “Let us be very clear, there is no humanitarian solution for this problem,” he added, underscoring what he called the need for a political solution to the conflict. Mr. Assad’s government has insisted that any United Nations investigation be focused only on one purported use of chemical weapons it says was carried out by insurgent forces in the Aleppo area on March 19 and which it says killed at least 26 people. Syria’s opposition has ridiculed the accusation, asserting its fighters would never use such weapons even if they knew how.
The number of Syrian refugees has risen from 30,000 a year ago to nearly 1.4 million this week, the refugee agency reported, a quarter more than it had predicted for the end of June. With 8,000 people fleeing across Syria’s borders every day, the number of refugees could double or triple to around three million by the end of the year, Mr. Guterres said. Western nations have also cast strong doubts on the Syrian government’s claim, and have said that any investigation should also include claims by anti-Assad activists that the government has used chemical weapons in the city of Homs and the Damascus suburbs.
Relief agencies estimate four million people inside Syria are in need of some form of humanitarian assistance after two years of conflict that have decimated its health service and basic economic and social infrastructure. In addition, aid officials say, neighboring Lebanon and Jordan are growing desperate at the strain on their health and school resources imposed by the influx of Syrian refugees, many of them taken in by already poor local communities. Mr. Ban told reporters on Wednesday that an investigative team he had assembled was “ready to deploy quickly, as soon as we have the Syrian government’s consent.” But he also said that “the mission needs to investigate all the allegations made by the member states,” which suggested there would be no quick solution to the deadlock.
Even with Kuwait’s contribution, the United Nations-coordinated appeal for $1.5 billion in the first half of the year is only about half-met. Aid officials preparing an appeal for the second half of the year say the total number of people in need of some form of aid is pushing toward 10 million, creating a need for hundreds of millions of dollars of additional aid and a broader base of support. “There is no way to fund the Syrian crisis with the usual humanitarian budgets approved by traditional donors,” Mr. Guterres warned. “No way.” Martin Nesirky, a spokesman for Mr. Ban, said he could not comment on a report in The Washington Post that the British and French correspondence with Mr. Ban contained information about soil samples and witness interviews that bolstered  suspicion that Syrian forces had used the weapons. But Mr. Nesirky noted that “the secretary general has already said publicly that the governments of Syria, the United Kingdom and France have presented allegations with supporting information and requested a speedy investigation.”
Aid officials, however, have not enticed new donors. United Nations refugee agency figures show that most of the funds it received for Syrian refugees by early April had come from a small group of traditional donors including the United States, Japan, the European Union, a handful of mostly small European countries and Australia. In Washington, the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that American intelligence agencies were assessing claims that the Syrian government had used chemical agents, but would not be more definitive.
“This is the most visible crisis on the planet and despite all that, something more robust needs to happen,” Panos Moumtzis, the United Nations’ regional coordinator for Syrian refugees, said in a telephone interview. “The international community is aware but it hasn’t translated this into action.” “We receive many claims of chemical warfare use in Syria each day,” he said, “and we take them all seriously and we do all we can to investigate them.” A spokesman for the C.I.A. would not comment on the French and British reports.
When asked whether any of these claims, if confirmed, would cross President Obama’s threshold for military intervention in the two-year-old Syrian conflict, Mr. Clapper insisted that “was a policy question and not one for intelligence to comment on.”
Mr. Clapper’s testimony reflected a growing assessment within the American intelligence community that the Syrian government may have used some kind of chemical agents, such as a powerful tear gas, but not the most deadly ones, such as sarin.
These assessments are based on witness accounts, medical results from Syrian civilians who may have been exposed to chemical agents who were treated in Turkey, and preliminary testing of soil samples taken from Syria. But officials say there is no consensus and that more testing is needed. Some administration officials believe the Syrian government may be testing the West to see what chemical agents it can use and in what amounts before it would trigger Western intervention.
The questions over possible chemical weapons use in Syria was overshadowed at the United Nations on Thursday by dire new predictions of a worsening humanitarian crisis caused by the war, and frustrations that aid agencies are running out of money. Kuwait provided some respite with an announcement it had given $300 million to the international relief effort for refugees and other Syrian war victims. Kuwait’s donation, $275 million to nine United Nations agencies and $25 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross, was announced at a news briefing at the Geneva offices of the United Nations.
Access to deprived Syrians inside the country has also emerged as a major problem, aid officials said. Valerie Amos, the top United Nations humanitarian official, told a meeting of the Security Council on Thursday that Syria had imposed a new and onerous requirement that all aid trucks allowed into the country must be approved by two government ministers.
The number of Syrian refugees has risen to nearly 1.4 million this week from 30,000 a year ago, the United Nations refugee agency reported, a quarter more than it had predicted for the end of June. The number of refugees could double or triple to around three million by the end of the year, said António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.

Rick Gladstone reported from New York, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva.