State demands UN action on Syria after chlorine gas finding

The United States will work through the United Nations to send a “clear message” to the Syrian regime after a joint investigation by the U.N. and a chemical weapons watchdog attributed a third use of chlorine gas to regime forces, the State Department said Friday.

“The international community must uphold the strength and legitimacy of international law in the face of the first confirmed uses of chemical weapons by a State Party to the” Chemical Weapons Convention, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement Friday. “Inaction is simply not an option.

“To that end, we are working within the [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] and the U.N. Security Council to extend the instrumental work of the [Joint Investigative Mechanism] and to send a clear message that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated.”

The investigation, released publicly Thursday after first being reported late last week, found that on March 16, 2015, in Qmenas, Syrian armed forces dropped a device from a helicopter that released a toxic substance when it hit the ground. Witnesses and hospital staff said the smell and symptoms were consistent with chlorine gas, according to the report.

The report comes after the same investigation team in August attributed two other chlorine gas attacks to regime forces. It was the first time the U.N. attributed a chemical weapons attack in the Syrian civil war to a particular force.

There still wasn’t enough evidence to attribute another two attacks, in Kafr Zita on April 18, 2014, and Binnish on March 24, 2015, according to the most recent report, the team’s fourth.

The use of chlorine gas comes after Syrian President Bashar Assad signed a treaty in 2013 banning the use of chemical weapons and agreed to give up the country’s stockpile following a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds in Ghouta.

In his statement, Toner said the investigation team proved what the U.S. has already known.

“The Assad regime has systematically and repeatedly used chemical weapons against its own people,” he said. “The Assad regime’s abhorrent acts violate Syria’s obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and UN Security Council Resolution 2118.”

It’s time for the regime to face “real consequences,” he added.

“All those confirmed to have been involved in the use of chemical weapons in Syria must be held accountable,” Toner said. “To date, however, a handful of countries continue to shield the Assad regime from the consequences of its own actions, even as evidence mounts of its confirmed use of chemical weapons.”

A Security Council response has proven difficult because Russia, an Assad ally with Security Council veto power, has rejected the investigations’ findings.

At Thursday night’s Security Council meeting, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, said the fourth investigation was inconclusive.

“We can say already now that in most cases they are not substantiated by sufficient testimonial basis, first of all material proof, they are full of contradictions and therefore, unconvincing,” he said.

The row over chemical weapons is yet another rift between Moscow and the West over the five-and-a-half-year-long civil war in Syria.

In particular, they are now sparring over airstrikes on a school complex in Idlib province on Wednesday that killed at least 28 people, including 22 children. Witnesses and monitoring groups have said either the regime or Russia carried out the attack, which Russia denies.

U.N. officials have described the attack as one of the most egregious in the already devastating war and said it would constitute a war crime if deliberate.