Kerry: UN Report Confirms Assad Forces Used Sarin in Syria

September 19, 2013

by VOA News

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says the U.N. report about last month's chemical weapons attack in Syria confirms that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces carried out the attack.

Kerry told reporters at the State Department Thursday that the facts were not complicated.

"Sarin was used. Sarin killed.," he said. "The world can decide whether it was used by the regime which has used chemical weapons before, the regime which had the rockets and the weapons, or 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 that without even being noticed, they just dissembled it all and packed up and got out of the center of Damascus controlLed by Assad. Please."

In an interview with Fox News broadcast Thursday, President Assad said he was fully committed to disposing of his government's chemical arsenal. He denied his forces launched a poison gas attack last month that killed hundreds near Damascus, and he promised to abide by a U.S.-Russia deal aimed at destroying the chemical stockpiles.

Assad described the situation as "complicated," saying destruction of the weapons would cost about $1 billion and would take a year or "maybe a little more."

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said his country had no plans to destroy Syria's chemical weapons on its own territory, although he acknowledged it had the facilities to do so.

Russia and the United States are the only countries with the industrial scale capacity to handle mustard, VX, sarin or cyanide-armed munitions, but the import of chemical weapons is banned under U.S. law.

The disarmament plan, which is still being debated by U.N. Security Council envoys, requires Syria's government to turn over details of its chemical weapons by Saturday. Assad said he was willing to do this "tomorrow," and can provide experts access to the sites where the weapons were stored.

The Syrian leader criticized a U.N. report issued this week that confirmed sarin nerve gas was used in an attack against civilians in the rebel-held suburb of Ghouta on August 21.

Although the report did not assign blame, the U.S. and other Western nations said it strongly suggested that government forces, not rebels, were responsible for the attack.

President Assad called the findings "unrealistic," expressing doubt about the authenticity of the large amount of photos and videos purporting to show the aftermath of the attack.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said evidence gathered by U.N. investigators on the ground and released Monday "indisputably" and "overwhelmingly" confirmed the use of the nerve agent sarin on a relatively large scale in the attack on Ghouta.

The U.S. said the attack killed 1,400 people.