RT | July 31, 2013
Syria has agreed to let three sites undergo investigation by a team of UN chemical weapons experts to assess whether the accusations that the country employed the devices during the country’s two year civil war carried any weight.
“The Mission will travel to Syria as soon as possible to contemporaneously investigate three of the reported incidents, including Khan al-Asal,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press office told Reuters in a statement.
Syria contends that rebels were responsible for some chemical weapons usage in the region while the rebels accuse the government of playing a role. Earlier this month, Russia submitted to the UN its analysis of samples taken in Aleppo, where chemical weapons had allegedly been used in March.
Russia’s findings indicated that it was rebels – not the Syrian army – behind the Khan al-Assal incident, in which more than 30 people died.
“We submitted a full set of documents [to the UN]. That’s over 80 pages, including photographs and precise geographic coordinates [of places where samples were taken], procedures and results,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pointed out.
The United States cast doubt on the Russian analysis.