France Offers Evidence of ‘Multiple’ Uses of Nerve Gas in Syria
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — France announced on Tuesday that French laboratory tests had confirmed that sarin gas had been used “multiple times” in Syria, but only “in a localized way.” The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said that in one case, at least, “there is no doubt it was the regime and its accomplices” that used the gas. In a statement, Mr. Fabius said samples of body fluids taken from victims in Syria and tested at a French laboratory — including urine samples carried out of Syria by French reporters — “prove the presence of sarin,” a poisonous nerve gas. “It would be unacceptable that those guilty of these crimes can benefit from impunity,” Mr. Fabius said, without specifying of whom he spoke. But sarin is in the government’s stock of chemical weapons, and he later told France 2 television that blood samples from victims of a helicopter attack in April in Idlib Province left no doubt that it was the government that had used sarin. “We are aware of the entire chain, from when the attack took place to when the people were killed and the samples taken,” he said. Mr. Fabius handed France’s evidence to Ake Sellstrom, the chief of the mission of inquiry appointed by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. Britain and France have asked Mr. Ban to investigate various charges of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The French announcement offered the clearest evidence so far that sarin had been used in the conflict in Syria, which has lasted more than two years and left more than 80,000 people dead. Israeli officials have cited but not revealed evidence that the government of President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly used chemical weapons, and the White House has said that American intelligence agencies have determined with varying degrees of confidence that it used sarin on a small scale. United Nations investigators in Geneva on Tuesday also reported the likely use of chemical weapons in Syria, in a report focusing on “new levels of brutality.” The investigators’ report cited for the first time the government’s use of thermobaric bombs, which scatter a cloud of explosive particles before detonating, sending a devastating blast of pressure and extreme heat that incinerates those caught in the blast and sucks the oxygen from the lungs of people in the vicinity. It said the bombs were used in March in the fierce struggle for the town of Qusayr, near the Lebanon border. “Syria is in free fall,” Paulo Pinheiro, the head of a commission of inquiry on the hostilities in Syria, told the United Nations Human Rights Council. “Crimes that shock the conscience have become a daily reality.” His four-member panel reported 17 cases that could be called massacres between mid-January and mid-May, and urged world powers to cut off supplies of weapons that could only result in more civilian casualties. The panel’s report drew swift criticism from both sides. Syria’s ambassador to the Human Rights Council, Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, accused Mr. Pinheiro’s panel of “excessively exaggerating its conclusions” and of lacking neutrality. The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces said in a statement that there could be “no comparison between those who systematically drop fatal explosives, killing innocent women and children to suppress a popular revolution, and those who bear light and medium arms to defend unarmed civilians.” The panel’s report played directly into the increasingly divisive debate in Europe and the United States about the possibility of supplying weapons to the rebels seeking the overthrow of Mr. Assad. The European Union allowed its embargo on arms sales to any party in Syria to lapse, but no member nation has any immediate plans to arm the rebels before possible peace talks in Geneva. Meanwhile, Russia and Iran have been supplying weapons to the Syrian government, and diplomats say Qatar and Saudi Arabia are supplying Islamist militants fighting the government. On Tuesday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia defended the Russian sales to Syria as legal, but said the advanced S-300 anti-aircraft system, the focus of intense concern for Israel and the United States, had not yet been shipped. The United Nations investigators’ report provided a stark challenge for senior Russian and American officials who are to meet in Geneva on Wednesday to discuss how to bring all the parties together for peace talks. The panel cited growing use of cluster munitions, barrel bombs and surface-to-surface missiles as evidence of the government’s “flagrant disregard” for the distinction between combatants and civilians demanded by international law. “There is a strong element of retribution in the government’s approach, with civilians paying a price for ‘allowing’ armed groups to operate within their towns,” the report said. Both sides have adopted siege tactics, trapping civilians in their homes and cutting off supplies of food, water, medicine and electricity, the report stated, in clear breach of international law. The panel also reported instances in which forces of both sides had used or threatened attacks to drive civilians out of particular areas, which would also constitute a war crime. Graphic descriptions of the toll on civilians caught in the recent siege of Qusayr by government forces starkly illustrated the panel’s findings, with reports of women and children living in bunkers and foxholes to escape bombardment. “We couldn’t leave the hole for a week,” a Syrian woman who managed to escape to Lebanon told the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “We ate the little food we had brought with us. My children were crying constantly.” The conflict “is becoming more horrific every day,” Mr. Pinheiro said, listing abuses that included murder, torture, extrajudicial execution and the use of child soldiers under the age of 15. The panel’s report said there were “reasonable grounds to believe limited quantities of toxic chemicals were used” in Aleppo and Damascus on March 19, in Aleppo on April 13 and in Idlib on April 29. Mr. Pinheiro said the conclusions were based on interviews with victims of attacks, refugees from Syria and some medical personnel. President Obama has cautioned the Syrian government about deploying chemical weapons and thereby raising the possibility of losing control of them, calling the transfer or use of significant quantities “a red line” for the United States. Last week, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that the Syrian government had used canisters of some form of toxic gas against rebel forces in the Damascus suburb of Jobar. Le Monde said it had placed two journalists with the rebels for two months, and that a photographer working for the paper “suffered blurred vision and respiratory difficulties for four days” after inhaling a gas on April 13. The journalists brought back the urine samples from victims in Jobar. <NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Steven Erlanger reported from Paris, and Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London. |