UN chief gets Syria chemical weapons report
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 16, 2013
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Sunday received the report of the UN team probing the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria and plans to brief the members of the Security Council on the findings in a closed-door session tomorrow.
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Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson and Dr. Ake Sellstrom, head of the UN team investigating possible use of chemical weapons in Syria |
"It was transmitted today […] to the Secretary-General by Professor Ake Sellström, the head of the Mission, and the Secretary-General will provide it to the Member States tomorrow morning," says the note.
Following his briefing at the 15-nation Security Council, Ban will speak to reporters at around 12:50 p.m. EDT (1650 GMT) Monday, the spokesman said.
The text of the report will be made available on Monday morning on the website of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, which is: http://www.un.org/disarmament/, the spokesman added.
On Sept. 2, samples collected by the United Nations chemical weapons inspection team in Syria were transferred from The Hague to laboratories for analysis. They were from the site of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ghouta area of Damascus, the Syrian capital on Aug. 21, when over 1,000 people were claimed to be killed.
The UN has said the analyses would be conducted in laboratories in Europe "strictly adhering to the highest established standards of verification recognized by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)."
The UN fact-finding group, led by Swedish specialist Ake Sellstrom, was created by the UN chief in March at the request of the Syrian government. The investigators were ordered out of the war-torn country on Aug. 31 to return to The Hague.
The team, which was initially set to investigate the alleged March 19 chemical attacks on Khan al-Asal in the northern province of Aleppo and two other undisclosed sites, arrived at the war-torn nation on Aug. 18.
The investigators were later told to travel to the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, where chemical weapons were allegedly used on Aug. 21, to collect evidence.
The UN probe team is mandated to find out whether chemical weapons were used in the Middle East country, but not who used them.
Since fighting began in March 2011 between the Syrian government and opposition groups, as many as 100,000 people have been killed, including more than 7,000 children, reports said.
In addition, almost two million have fled to neighboring countries and a further four million have been internally displaced. At least 6.8 million Syrians need urgent humanitarian assistance, half of them are children.
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