Russia to provide evidence 'implicating Syrian rebels in chemical attacks'

Sergei Lavrov says he will give evidence to United Nations security council, and describes UN report as biased

The Russian foreign minister has said he will give the United Nations security council evidence that implicates Syrian rebels in a chemical attack.

Sergei Lavrov described a UN report that concluded that the nerve agent sarin was used on the outskirts of Damascus on 21 August as one-sided and biased.

He said he will give the security council the evidence, which is being supplied by Syrian officials but which he has not seen as yet.

The UN report on the chemical attack did not specifically blame either side in the country's bitter civil war but led to conclusions from the international community that forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad were responsible.

Following the criticism from Russia, the UN said the findings of the report are "indisputable".

Lavrov said there was plenty of evidence that pointed to rebel involvement in chemical attacks.

"We will discuss all this in the security council, together with the report which was submitted by UN experts and which confirms that chemical weapons were used. We will have to find out who did it," he said.

Earlier, Lavrov's deputy Sergei Ryabkov said an initial UN security council resolution supporting a deal for Syria to scrap its chemical arms should be limited to that purpose, suggesting Moscow would oppose any threat of force.

Speaking in Damascus after meeting Assad, Ryabkov also criticised the UN's report.

He accused the investigators of all but ignoring evidence presented by the Syrian government that he said supported rebel culpability.

"We are disappointed that there is no due attention paid to this evidence in the report which the [UN] group presented in New York earlier this week," he told reporters in Damascus in televised remarks.

"One cannot be as one-sided and as flawed as we have seen, laying the full [blame for the] incident in Ghouta upon the Syrian government," he said.

He said the report was limited in scope and reiterated Russian calls for further investigation that would include accounts from sources including the internet and government evidence of alleged chemical arms use in the days after 12 August.

The US-Russia deal, reached on Saturday, calls for Syria to account fully for its chemical weapons within a week and for the removal and destruction of the entire arsenal by mid-2014.

Diplomats from the permanent UN security council members – Russia, the United States, Britain, France and China – began talks on Tuesday on a resolution intended to support the deal.

Diplomats have said initial western drafts called for giving Syria an ultimatum to give up its chemical weapons or face "necessary measures".

Ryabkov said the resolution should support an expected decision by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' executive council setting out procedures for dealing with the chemical weapons "and nothing more than that" beyond providing an element of security for OPCW activity in Syria.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/18/russia-syrian-rebels-chemical-weapons