Ed. Note: This is adapted from DipNote, the official blog of the U.S. Department of State. You can see the original post here.
On Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon briefed members of the Security Council on the report of the United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria. Professor Ake Sellstrom, the UN Chief Investigator on the mission to Syria, joined the Council and the Secretary General to discuss the report’s findings. The report concludes unequivocally that chemical weapons were used on a relatively large scale in the Ghouta area of Damascus on August 21, 2013, causing numerous casualties, particularly among civilians.
While the United States will continue analyzing the UN’s findings carefully, a preliminary review makes clear that only the regime could have carried out this large-scale chemical weapons attack.
Indeed, several crucial details confirm the regime’s guilt. The United States has associated one of the munitions identified in the UN report – 122 mm improvised rockets – with previous Assad regime attacks. We have reviewed thousands of open source videos related to the current conflict in Syria, but have not observed the opposition manufacturing or using this style of rocket.
Equally significant, the environmental, chemical, and medical samples that the UN investigators collected provide clear and compelling evidence that the surface-to-surface rockets used in the Ghouta area of Damascus on August 21 contained the nerve agent sarin. We know the regime possesses sarin. We have no evidence, however, that the opposition does.
Fonte: White House