NEW YORK: Russia said on Tuesday that the newly unveiled report on the chemical attack in Syria needs to be studied as it does not offer any categorical judgments and inferences which could indicate that who was responsible for the attacks, the President Bashar al-Assad’s regime or opposition rebels.
On Monday, the 38-page report compiled by a UN expert team confirmed that chemical weapons were used in a deadly assault on August 21 on the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta, killing hundreds of people.
“The report is diligent but very technical. It avoids categorical judgments and inferences, and it needs to be studied,” Russia’s UN representative Vitaly Churkin told the Russian media at the UN headquarters in New York.
“As people examine it, everyone can draw their own conclusion, but I hope that won’t be driven by political motives,” Churkin added.
However, in a statement US President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, said the technical evidence of high-grade sarin revealed in the report “reinforces our assessment that these attacks were carried out by the Syrian regime, as only they had the capability to mount an attack in this manner.”
Earlier, US envoy to the UN Samantha Power said the study proved that “only the regime” had the capacity to carry out the attack on a Damascus suburb that the US claims took more than 1,400 lives.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague also said the findings were “fully consistent” with the previous British stance that Assad’s forces were responsible for the attack.
