Western powers to press Syria resolution at UN

Western powers were poised on Monday to press their efforts for a UN resolution to rid Syria of chemical weapons, one day after a report by the world body describing a "chilling" sarin gas attack there.

United Nations experts, without assigning blame, said they had gathered "clear and convincing evidence" that surface-to-surface rockets took sarin gas into the opposition-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August 21.

The United States had threatened a military strike on Syria over the attack, which it said killed more than 1,400 people. Washington said responsibility for the attack rests squarely with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

"The technical details of the UN report make clear that only the regime could have carried out this large-scale chemical weapons attack," said Washington's UN ambassador Samantha Power. "It defies logic to think that the opposition would have infiltrated the regime-controlled area to fire on opposition-controlled areas."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said there was "no doubt" that government forces were to blame, while British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the report made "abundantly clear" that the Syrian regime was behind the attack.

France and Britain will soon send a draft resolution to other Security Council members demanding a threat of sanctions if Assad does not keep to a disarmament plan and for the chemical attacks to be referred to the International Criminal Court, diplomats said.

The council, meanwhile, is expected to start negotiations this week.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria as "a war crime" as the country's conflict again spilled into neighboring nations, with Turkey saying it had shot down a Syrian military helicopter.

Ban said the report prepared by the experts "makes for chilling reading."

He added that the use of sarin had been proved "unequivocally and objectively" and that the Ghouta attack was "the most signficant" with chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein unleashed poison gas in Halabja, Iraq, in 1988, killing thousands.

"The environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used" in Ghouta, said the report by UN inspectors who were in Syria when the attack was staged.

The experts concluded that "chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians including children on a relatively large scale."

A separate UN-mandated independent human rights inquiry announced separately yesterday that it was investigating 14 alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria.