Syria Asserts Claim of New Strikes as U.N. Impasse Looms

By RICK GLADSTONE, ALAN COWELL and STEVEN LEE MYERS

The United Nations Security Council appeared headed for a new confrontation over Syria on Wednesday after Britain said it would introduce a resolution accusing the Syrian government of a deadly chemical weapons attack last week and authorizing the use of force in that conflict, a measure that Russia was almost certain to block.

Russia, the Syrian government’s most powerful foreign ally, argued that it was premature to even talk about such a resolution while United Nations inspectors were on the ground in Syria investigating the allegations surrounding the Aug. 21 attack in the suburbs of the capital, Damascus. Opposition figures and rights groups have said that hundreds of civilians were killed.

That attack has galvanized Western efforts that could lead to a military strike on Syria, which is well into the third year of a brutal civil conflict that has already killed more than 100,000 people and left millions displaced.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, added a new level of complexity to the issue on Wednesday, announcing that he had submitted evidence of three previously unreported instances of chemical weapons use in Syria, which he asserted had been carried out by Syrian insurgents. Mr. Jaafari said the Syrian government had requested that the United Nations investigators expand their inquiry to include those events as well, which could lengthen their stay in the country.

Mr. Jaafari said the new instances occurred on Aug. 22, 24 and 25, and were also in the Damascus suburbs. He said Syrian soldiers were the targets. The ambassador did not explain why he was only now bringing forth the allegations, which critics were likely to view as a stalling exercise.

Mr. Jaafari repeated the Syrian government’s denials that it had ever used chemical weapons in the conflict and said the accusations were a conspiracy by Western nations acting on Israel’s behalf. He rejected assertions by the United States, Britain and other Western allies that there was persuasive evidence of Syrian government culpability in the use of the banned weapons.

“We are not warmongers,” he told reporters outside the Security Council chambers. “We are a peaceful nation seeking stability. The Syria government is totally innocent of these accusations.”

The British government put forth its proposed resolution on Wednesday as the United Nations inspectors in Damascus began a second day of efforts to gather evidence about the Aug. 21 attack. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who said the inspectors would need at least two more days to complete their work, had no immediate reaction to the Syrian ambassador’s allegations of the three subsequent, previously unreported attacks.

In London, the office of Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain had “drafted a resolution condemning the chemical weapons attack by Assad” and “authorizing necessary measures to protect civilians.”

“We’ve always said we want the U.N. Security Council to live up to its responsibilities on Syria,” a statement from his office said. “Today we are giving its permanent members the opportunity to do that.”

The statement said the British draft proposed invoking Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which can be used to authorize the use of force “to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

The aim of the measures would be to “protect civilians from chemical weapons,” the statement said, but there were no details about what measures Britain envisaged. Mr. Cameron’s office also said he spoke late Tuesday with President Obama “to hear the latest U.S. thinking on the issue and to set out the options being considered by the government.”

“Both leaders agreed that all the information available confirmed a chemical weapons attack had taken place, noting that even the Iranian president and Syrian regime had conceded this,” Mr. Cameron’s office said. “And they both agreed they were in no doubt that the Assad regime was responsible. Regime forces were carrying out a military operation to regain that area from the opposition at the time; and there is no evidence that the opposition has the capability to deliver such a chemical weapons attack.”

Mr. Cameron, the statement said, told Mr. Obama that Britain “had not yet taken a decision on the specific nature of our response, but that it would be legal and specific to the chemical weapons attack.”

In a statement later Wednesday after a meeting of Britain’s National Security Council, Mr. Cameron’s office said that ministers had agreed that “the Assad regime was responsible for this attack and that the world shouldn’t stand idly by.” Any response, it said, “should be legal, proportionate and specifically to protect civilians by deterring further chemical weapons use.”

In a separate declaration after discussions at NATO, the alliance’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, also sharply criticized Mr. Assad’s government, saying that “information available from a wide variety of sources points to the Syrian regime as responsible for the use of chemical weapons in these attacks.”

“This is a clear breach of longstanding international norms and practice. Any use of such weapons is unacceptable and cannot go unanswered. Those responsible must be held accountable,” the statement added. But Mr. Rasmussen gave no indication that NATO was contemplating any specific action.

As Syria’s turmoil has deepened since revolt took root in March 2011 and grew into a bloody civil war, Russia — a permanent member of the Security Council along with China, the United States, France and Britain — has steadfastly blocked efforts to subject Mr. Assad’s government to military pressure.

On Wednesday, Russian officials continued to warn against international intervention. The foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, spoke by telephone with the United Nations special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, and warned that an attack “will only lead to the further destabilization of the situation in the country and the region,” according to a statement posted by the Foreign Ministry.

For his part, Mr. Brahimi told reporters in Geneva on Wednesday that international law required Security Council approval for any military action in Syria. Mr. Brahimi also said the United States and Britain had yet to share what they said was evidence that established Mr. Assad’s government had used chemical weapons.

In a further sign of mounting tensions, Russia’s Emergency Services Ministry said it was evacuating more Russians and citizens from other former Soviet republics from Syria, where Moscow maintains a naval base and where thousands of its citizens live after decades as the main international sponsor of the government in Damascus.

Russian special flights, sent to Syria with humanitarian supplies, returned with scores of Russians and citizens of Belarus and Ukraine. The Emergency Services Ministry said 75 Russians, along with nine people from Belarus and five from Ukraine, arrived in Moscow late Tuesday, while a second plane carrying 27 more Russians arrived on Wednesday morning.

Russia began evacuating its citizens from Syria in January. Since then 730 have left, most of them women and children. They are only a fraction of the more than 30,000 Russians who are believed to live in Syria, but in the wake of the attacks outside of Damascus, the pace of the evacuations appears to be increasing.

The idea of Western military intervention has also rattled Iran, Syria’s main regional ally. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told the ISNA state news agency on Wednesday that American intervention would be a “disaster for the region,” news reports said.

“The region is like a gunpowder store and the future cannot be predicted,” he said.

Britain’s latest move seemed to be designed to lay the diplomatic groundwork for action by a coalition of outside forces, led by the United States, if there was no consensus at the United Nations.

United Nations inspectors, who carried out a first visit to collect samples and other evidence on Monday from the Ghouta area east of Damascus, had initially been expected to make their second visit on Tuesday but postponed it because of safety concerns.

On Wednesday, the inspectors arrived in the contested area to cries of “God is Great” from Syrians lining the roadside, according to amateur video posted on YouTube. They drove in a convoy of four white sport-utility vehicles emblazoned with the initial “U.N.” in black, approaching rebel positions on what seemed to be a deserted, narrow street lined with apartment houses.

The gathering drumbeat of calls for intervention has alarmed some Britons, including the Most Rev. Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, who was quoted on Wednesday as urging lawmakers to avoid a rush to judgment about military action that could have “unforeseeable ramifications across the whole Arab and Muslim world.”

Rick Gladstone reported from New York, Alan Cowell from London and Steven Lee Myers from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by Stephen Castle from London, Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva, Karam Shoumali from Istanbul, Marlise Simons from The Hague, and an employee of The New York Times from Beirut, Lebanon.