U.N. inspectors plan to return to Syria soon to follow up on other allegations of chemical use, the head of the inspection team said.
Ake Sellstrom, leader of the chemical weapons inspection team that visited Syria earlier, said the inspection could occur as soon as next week, CNN reported Wednesday.
Soon after Western countries said a just-issued U.N. chemical weapons report indicated the Syrian regime was responsible for the gassing of hundreds of people in an Aug. 21 attack on Damascus suburbs, Russia criticized the inspectors' report as "distorted" and defended its ally.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also said the inspectors' report was "one-sided" and based on insufficient evidence, Russia Today reported.
"The point here is not about accusing parties," Ryabkov said. "The] point is ... that those inspectors of the U.N. should come back to Syria to complete their investigation."
Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported Wednesday Syria gave a Russian diplomat evidence opposition forces were involved in the use of chemical weapons in August. The report didn't indicate what the evidence was.
Russia maintains it believes Syrian rebels may have carried out the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack. U.S. intelligence estimates the attack killed more than 1,400 people.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country would veto any U.N. motion OK'ing the use of force if Syria doesn't comply with its chemical disarmament obligations.
Lavrov also attacked the U.N. report as unprofessional and unconvincing.
The weapons inspectors' report did not assign blame for the attack, which killed hundreds of civilians through exposure to the nerve agent sarin. But it detailed the large size and particular shapes of the munitions and the direction from which two of them were fired.
Non-proliferation experts said the report appeared to implicate the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The Assad regime has said insurgents carried out the attack. Russia has agreed, arguing it makes no sense that Syrian forces were responsible.
"We have very serious reasons to believe that this was an act of provocation," Lavrov told reporters in Moscow in a news conference with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
"We want the events of Aug. 21 to be investigated dispassionately, objectively and professionally," Lavrov said.
When reporters asked him about the discovery of Cyrillic lettering on one of the rockets that delivered the gas, Lavrov said it meant nothing. Maybe other nations, including some in the West, counterfeited old Soviet weaponry, he said, and told them to stop doing so, The Washington Post reported.
Fabius said he saw the situation totally differently. He said the inspectors' report seemed to leave "no doubt" Assad's forces were to blame for the chemical weapons attack.
The Russian-French dispute came as the five permanent Security Council members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- met at U.N. headquarters in New York to negotiate a resolution calling for Syria's chemical weapons to be dismantled and destroyed.
The U.N. ambassadors were scheduled to meet again Wednesday, British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said.
The resolution is based on a framework agreement reached Saturday between Washington and Moscow, giving the Security Council authority to review Syria's compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria agreed to join as the U.S.-Russian framework was finalized.
Under the framework agreement, the Assad regime is expected to submit a "comprehensive listing" of all its chemical weapons supplies and facilities by the end of this week. All the weapons are to be destroyed by June 30, 2014.
The U.S.-Russian framework also says if Syria doesn't comply with its obligations, the Security Council would have a right to impose measures under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which lets the council take military action to "restore international peace and security."
But the United States and its allies understand that statement differently than Russia.
Lavrov and other Russian officials say the statement does not actually say the U.N. resolution would be incorporated under Chapter VII. They say it simply lists Chapter VII as an option available to the council at a future date.
This opens the possibility a further resolution would be needed if Syrian non-compliance becomes an issue, The New York Times said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters Tuesday he hoped the spirit of Saturday's framework agreement would "help forge unity in the Security Council."
He also expressed hope any Security Council resolution "can really be an enforceable one."
culled from http://www.upi.com
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