John Kerry presses for UN actions against Syria after latest report
The US has called for a binding UN resolution on Syria’s chemical weapons next week, as a senior Syrian official said the country’s conflict has reached a stalemate.
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John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said the “definitive” UN report had proved that the Syrian regime was behind an August chemical weapons attack.
“Now the test comes. The Security Council must be prepared to act next week,” Kerry said. “It is vital for the international community to stand up and speak out.”
Citing ballistic, medical, photographic and other evidence, Kerry used the report to reassert the administration’s credibility in going forward with the military threat against and increased engagement with Syria, arguing “every single bit of it confirms what we already knew, and what we told America and the world.”
“There you have it. Sarin was used. Sarin killed,” Kerry said, his voice rising. “The world can decide whether it was used by the regime which has used weapons before, the regime that had the rockets and the weapons, whether the opposition secretly went unnoticed into territory they don’t control to fire rockets they don’t have, containing sarin that they don’t possess, to kill their own people, and without it even being noticed they just disassembled it all and packed up and got out of the center of Damascus controlled by Assad.
“Please,” he said. “This isn’t complicated. When we said we know what is true, we meant it.”
Kerry appeared to be responding to comments like those from Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov, who said the Kremlin was “unhappy” about the UN report, calling it “distorted” and “one-sided” on Russian state television.
That skepticism was echoed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who had hammered out the framework for an agreement that would avoid the military strikes that President Barack Obama has threatened, by having Assad turn over the chemical weapons he was saying as recently as two weeks ago his army didn’t have.
Assad said this week that they will have over all of the chemical weapons to be destroyed and that process will take about one year – read more here
