Experts’ Report to U.N. on Syrian Mass Killing Is Expected Within a Few Days
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Version 0 of 1. The secretary general of the United Nations could receive a widely awaited report on Monday, or possibly earlier, on last month’s mass killing in Syria that is believed to have involved chemical weapons, diplomats said Thursday. Some said they expected the findings would point unambiguously to Syrian government culpability. The team of chemical weapons inspectors composing the report, who left Syria 10 days after the Aug. 21 attack, are responsible for determining only whether such weapons were used, not who used them. Their report will conspicuously avoid any assignment of blame, as instructed by the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. But diplomats and arms control experts who are knowledgeable about both the type and volume of evidence the inspectors amassed in Syria said they believed the report would be a meticulously detailed account that would lead readers to draw the conclusion that only the Syrian military forces could have carried out such an attack, which asphyxiated hundreds of civilians. The inspectors amassed many samples of blood, urine, soil, air and water, as well as evidence about the type of projectiles used, including shell fragments and casings that retain the residue of deadly chemical compounds long after they have been detonated. “They have gotten very rich samples,” said one diplomatic official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been completed. “It seems they were happy with the wealth of evidence that they got.” Asked whether the evidence in the report would most likely point to government use, the official said, “It is my expectation.” The United States, France and Britain have already concluded, based on their own analyses, that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces were responsible, and Human Rights Watch has also drawn that conclusion. Mr. Assad and his principal foreign ally, Russia, have asserted that such a conclusion is absurd and that the attack must have been carried out by insurgents, who have been seeking to topple Mr. Assad in the 30-month-old Syrian conflict. The United Nations report is important because it will be regarded as the most objective, scientifically based and politically neutral version of the attack, which has become a defining event in the Syrian conflict and perhaps the most pressing issue confronting the United Nations as it prepares for the annual General Assembly in New York this month. Aides to Mr. Ban, who have been asked daily about the report’s content and its anticipated completion date, have repeatedly declined to offer specific answers, saying only that it will be ready as soon as possible and that it will address only the question of whether the weapons used were chemical or conventional. But they have also said the report will be constructed as an “evidence-based narrative” — language that both diplomats and outside arms-control experts have interpreted as an indication that the attack’s source will not be a mystery. Three United Nations diplomats said Thursday that they believed the report could be delivered on Monday to Mr. Ban, who has said he would share it promptly with Security Council members. The report’s authors are working under the auspices of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which was established in 1997 to carry out the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty. Arms control experts who are in regular contact with the organization said that its director general, Ahmet Uzumcu, cut short a planned trip to China and returned to its headquarters in The Hague on Thursday, in anticipation that the report could be released soon. Paul F. Walker, an arms control expert who helped demilitarize Russia’s chemical weapons stockpile in the 1990s, said he expected the report to contain precise details not only about what type of chemical agents were detected but also whether they had been delivered via rocket, artillery shell, aerial bomb or spray tank. Leftover pieces of shells, he said, would point to the exact type of weapon used. Dr. Walker also said that if Syria’s chemical arsenal was sequestered and destroyed, as the United States and Russia are now discussing, at least 50 inspectors — almost half the total number at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons — would be required just to carry out the inventory and verification process. “We’re really talking years,” he said. |