Syria: Russia rubbishes UN evidence on gas attack

Russia has denounced the United Nations investigators’ findings on a poison gas attack in Syria as preconceived and tainted by politics, stepping up its criticism of a report western nations said proved president Bashar al-Assad’s forces were responsible.

Russias deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov meets Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in Damascus yesterday. Picture: AP

Russia, which holds veto power in the UN Security Council, could cite doubts about proof of culpability in opposing future efforts by the United States, Britain and France to punish Syria for any violations of a deal to abandon chemical weapons.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who negotiated the deal with the US, said on Tuesday the UN report had not dispelled Russia suspicion that rebels staged the attack to provoke western military intervention in the civil war.

Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov, visiting Syria as warplanes struck rebel areas and clashes continued on the ground, yesterday took Russia’s criticism a step further.

“We are disappointed, to put it mildly, about the approach taken by the UN secretariat and the UN inspectors – led by Ake Sellstrom of Sweden – who prepared the report selectively and incompletely,” he told Russia’s news agency RIA in Damascus.

“Without receiving a full picture of what is happening here, it is impossible to call the nature of the conclusions reached by the UN experts … anything but politicised, preconceived and one-sided,” said Mr Ryabkov, who met Mr Assad yesterday.

Russia, like Mr Assad’s regime, says the rebels carried out the attack, which the US says killed more than 1,400 people, including more than 400 children.

Mr Assad’s regime gave Mr Ryabkov what it said was evidence that rebels launched the attack, and Mr Lavrov said Russia would present it to the Security Council.

Repsonding, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said that “the findings in that report are indisputable. They speak for themselves and this was a thoroughly objective report on that specific incident.”

Mr Nesirky added that the experts would return to Syria as soon as possible to continue their investigation into a March incident at Khan al-Asal and all other “credible allegations”.

The advocacy group Human Rights Watch said rocket trajectories detailed in the UN report suggested the sarin-filled shells were fired from a base belonging to the Republican Guard, run by Mr Assad’s brother, Maher.

Diplomats in New York said Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin questioned some of the findings in Mr Sellstrom’s report at a Security Council meeting on Monday. He asked Mr Sellstrom to describe the quality of the weapons that dispersed sarin.

The rift over blame may complicate discussions among veto-holding Security Council members – Russia, China, the US, Britain and France – over a western-drafted resolution to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons.

“We are surprised by Russia’s attitude because they are calling into question not the report, but the objectivity of the inspectors,” French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, pictured right, said in Paris.