A report by UN chemical weapons
experts will likely confirm that poison gas was used in an Aug. 21 attack on
Damascus suburbs that killed hundreds of people, U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon said on Friday.
"I believe that the report
will be an overwhelming, overwhelming report that chemical weapons were used
even though I cannot publicly say at this time before I receive this
report," Ban said at a UN meeting.
He was referring to a report by
the UN expert team led by Ake Sellstrom of Sweden. Ban also said that Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad "has committed many crimes against
humanity," though he did not say whether it was Assad's forces or rebels
who used chemical toxins in the Aug. 21 attack.
Earlier, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
said that Syria's deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, had contacted it with
a request for technical assistance.
Syria became a full member of the
global anti-chemical weapons treaty on Thursday, the country's U.N. envoy said,
a move that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had promised as
part of a Russian plan to avoid U.S. strikes.
This as, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov said they were hopeful that talks on Syria's chemical weapons would help
revive an international plan for a "Geneva 2" conference to end the
war in Syria.
Kerry, who said the ongoing talks on chemical weapons were "constructive",
told a news conference in Geneva that he and Lavrov planned to meet in New York
around Sept 28 and hoped to agree a date for the Geneva 2 conference then.
Meanwhile, Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said Syria became a full member
of the global anti-chemical weapons treaty on Thursday, a move that the
government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had promised as part of a deal
to avoid U.S. air strikes.
On another note, the Wall Street Journal said an elite Syrian unit that runs
the government's chemical arms program has been scattering the weapons to
dozens of sites across the country, potentially complicating U.S. plans for air
strikes.
The newspaper, citing unnamed U.S. officials and lawmakers briefed on the
intelligence, said on its website on Thursday that a secretive military group
known as Unit 450 had been moving the stocks around for months to help avoid
detection of the weapons.
The Journal quoted a senior U.S. official as saying that Washington estimated
that Damascus had 1,000 tons of chemical and biological agents, "although
there might be more."
HRW:
An international human rights group is accusing Syrian government forces
and pro-regime militias of summary executions that left at least 248
people dead in two predominantly Sunni Muslim towns along the
Mediterranean coast earlier this year.
Human Rights Watch said in a new report Friday that the killings took
place on May 2 and 3. The New York-based group says the report was based
on interviews with survivors, including some who saw or heard their
relatives being killed.
UN
The UN humanitarian chief has allocated $50 million to support the efforts of humanitarian agencies assisting the growing number of Syrians affected by the 2 1/2-year crisis in the country and in the region.
Valerie Amos said Friday the money from the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund represents the largest-ever single contribution to support a coordinated response to a single crisis.
She said $20 million will support aid operations inside Syria, $15 million will go to scale up efforts in Lebanon, $10 million will support the recent influx of Syrian refugees in Iraq and $5 million will boost humanitarian programs in Jordan.
The U.N. says more than 4.2 million people are displaced within Syria and 2 million have fled to other countries in the region.
In this regards, the United Nations refugee agency said the number of Syrians fleeing to Italy to escape the conflict in their homeland has surged in recent weeks, with about 3,300 reaching its shores in the past 40 days.
Most of the migrants are families with children and set out mainly from Egypt but also from Turkey. The majority of those interviewed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said they came from the Syrian capital Damascus.
Positions:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Syria's move to join
an international convention banning chemical weapons has proven its good
faith and reaffirmed a strong warning to the U.S. not to use force.
Speaking at a summit of an international security grouping dominated by
Russia and China, Putin said the move showed that Syria has "serious
intentions to follow this path."
For his part, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said at a summit of a
regional security group led by China and Russia that Iran supports the
Russian initiative to put Syria's chemical weapons arsenal under
international control and the decision by Damascus to join a global
anti-chemical weapons treaty.
REUTERS/AP
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