World - Middle East
U.S. Diplomat: Allegations Syria Still Using Chemical Weapons ‘Credible’
Cites ‘steady stream’ of accounts of use of chlorine as a weapon despite Syrian government denials
By Naftali Bendavid
Updated May 8, 2015 7:09 p.m. ET
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Three U.S. diplomats stepped up pressure against the Syrian government on Friday by accusing it of continuing to use chemical arms against its opponents in the country’s four-year civil war.
Children react after what activists said was shelling by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Wednesday. A U.S. diplomat termed chemical weapons use allegations against Syria ‘credible.’ Photo: Bassam Khabieh /Reuters
The American ambassador to The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Robert Mikulak, cited a “steady stream” of accounts that the government is using chlorine as a chemical weapon, as recently as this month.
Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that accounts by people in Syria over such chemical attacks are “strong and credible.”
And Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said evidence makes clear that Syria is killing people by dropping chlorine-filled barrels from helicopters onto neighborhoods and stressed that the international community needs to assign blame to Damascus.
“As you know, only the regime has helicopters,” Ms. Power said. “So we believe the factual record is quite straightforward and devastating in terms of Syrian regime use.”
Syria, which denies it uses chemical weapons, agreed in 2013 to a U.S.-Russia-sponsored plan to dismantle its chemical-arms network and join an international treaty banning their use to avert the threat of a U.S. attack.
In the past, President Bashar al-Assad’s allies in Beijing and Moscow have vetoed resolutions condemning his regime.
Yet, in recent months Syrian residents and activists have regularly reported attacks with chlorine gas or other gases that have left residents choking, suffocating and sometimes dead. Understaffed and underequipped medical facilities struggle to treat the victims.
Some of the attacks have come after Syria’s military experienced setbacks at the hands of rebel fighters, residents say.
In March, six members of one family, including three young children, died after activists and opposition groups said the Syrian regime dropped a chlorine gas bomb on their town in northwest Syria. Dozens of others were reported injured.
In early May, human-rights groups and residents reported that dozens of people, including children, suffocated after two bombs with chlorine gas were dropped on the northwest town of Saraqib.
An ambulance driver in the area said that people have begun to fear chlorine attacks more than regular shrapnel-loaded barrel bombs, “even though the explosive barrels kill more people.”
The use of chlorine, or any substance, as a chemical weapon violates the Chemical Weapons Convention. But chlorine is a common industrial substance that hasn’t been banned and is difficult to restrict or monitor.
Allegations of chemical-weapon use in Syria’s bitter civil war first arose after what a U.N. weapons inspectors’ report said was a sarin attack in August 2013 in a Damascus suburb that killed some 1,400 people.
That led Syria to agree to destroy its chemical arms and to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans their manufacture, use or stockpiling. Officials said in August 2014 that Syria’s chemical stockpile had been destroyed.
But the OPCW, which oversees the convention, is probing concerns the regime didn’t destroy all of them. “We continue to be told that discussions with Syria on the gaps and inconsistencies in its declaration have not resolved numerous issues and concerns,” Mr. Mikulak said on Friday.
The more immediate concern for many diplomats is the allegation that Syria is continuing to use chlorine. The OPCW launched a fact-finding mission in April 2014 to investigate the charges, concluding in September that chlorine was used “systematically and repeatedly” in northern Syrian villages.
But the mission isn’t authorized to name perpetrators, to the frustration of American diplomats. The U.S. is pursuing the issue in the U.N., where a group of physicians and others made a presentation on the chlorine allegations several weeks ago.
“We are deeply concerned, focused on the issue and seized with it,” Mr. Blinken said. “It’s something that is being very actively discussed and considered right now in New York at the United Nations.”
—Raja Abdulrahim and Joe Lauria contributed to this article.
Write to Naftali Bendavid at naftali.bendavid@wsj.com
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