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.
