By RICK GLADSTONE
A confrontation that is looming at the United Nations between the United States and Russia could jeopardize an international investigation into chemical attacks in Syria, notably a deadly sarin bombing in a rebel-held village last April.
There is no dispute that sarin, a lethal nerve agent banned by an international treaty Syria has signed, was used in the April 4 attack in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Idlib Province that killed and sickened hundreds. But Russia, the Syrian government’s most important ally, has cast doubts on Western assertions that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces dropped a bomb containing the poison.
If a report by the panel, due next Thursday, finds Mr. Assad’s side responsible, the Russians have indicated they will use their veto power in the United Nations Security Council to terminate the mandate of the panel leading the investigation. The panel, whose mandate expires in November, is the only mechanism for establishing accountability for chemical weapons atrocities in Syria.
This week, Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, proposed moving up a Security Council vote to extend the panel’s mandate for a year — before the report’s expected release on Thursday.
“This should not be controversial, but some Council members have decided to make it so,” Ms. Haley said in a statement. “Basing the renewal on the contents of the next report, which the Russians would like to do, politicizes the process. We can’t work like that.”
Ms. Haley said there was “overwhelming support” in the Security Council for the panel’s work, which she called essential to finding and prosecuting the perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria — whoever they may be. “We can’t pick and choose who we want to be at fault and who we don’t,” she said.
In a memo Ms. Haley sent to other Security Council diplomats, seen Friday by The New York Times, she pressed them to support a vote in the next few days to renew the panel’s mandate, partly because its work is far from over. Aside from the Khan Sheikhoun attack, more than 60 “credible allegations” of chemical weapons use in Syria are still under review, she said, but the panel is already winding down its operations, “given the uncertainty surrounding its mandate.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/world/middleeast/syria-russia-chemical-weapons.html
