Moscow report to U.N. details investigation of chemical weapons
WASHINGTON – A 100-page report on an investigation turned over to the
United Nations by Russia concludes that the Syrian rebels – not the
Syrian government – used the nerve agent sarin in an attack in the
Syrian city of Aleppo last March.
While contents of the report have not been released, sources tell WND
that the documentation indicates that deadly sarin poison gas was
manufactured in a Sunni-controlled region of Iraq and then transported
to Turkey for use by the Syrian opposition, whose ranks have swelled
with members of al-Qaida-affiliated groups.
President Obama, at a recent Stockholm, Sweden, news conference, was
dismissive of the alleged chemical weapons capability of the Syrian
opposition. The United Nations, however, claims it now has the
documentation to substantiate the claim but still hasn't begun
investigating its findings.
Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry claim the U.S. has
intercepts, or signals intelligence called Sigint, which establish
that the Syrians ordered the chemical weapons attack on opposition
forces Aug. 21.
But sources say that the intelligence lacks any smoking-gun evidence
pointing to a direct order from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In addition, sources tell WND that the intelligence originated with
the Israelis, who have a vested interest in seeing Assad removed and
his known chemical weapons storage facilities destroyed.
The question remains whether the U.S. has independent, verifiable
intelligence of what the Israelis apparently provided to the U.S.
intelligence community.
Memories remain fresh of Sigint used by then-U.S. Secretary of State
Colin Powell in February 2003 to make the case against Iraq.
Based on that Sigint intelligence, the U.S. initiated military action
in March 2003 against the Iraqi regime, only to discover following a
country-wide search that there were no stockpiles of chemical weapons.
U.S. military action never was approved by the U.N. Security Council.
However, military action with a "coalition of the willing" resulted in
regime change and the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
As Obama prepares to order a "limited" missile attack on Syria, the
documentation that the U.N. received from the Russians earlier this
year indicates that the poison gas attack on Aleppo in early March was
sarin gas supplied to Sunni foreign fighters by a Saddam-era general
working under the outlawed Iraqi Baath party leader, Izzat Ibrahim
al-Douri.
Al-Douri was a top aide to Saddam Hussein before he was deposed as
president. In 1988, he ordered a massive chemical weapons attack on
the Kurdish village of Halabja.
Sources say the sarin nerve gas used in the attack on the Khan
al-Assal area had been prepared by former Iraqi Military Industries
Brig. Gen. Adnan al-Dulaimi and then were supplied to Baath-affiliated
foreign fighters of the Sunni and Saudi Arabian-backed Jabhat al-Nusra
Front in Aleppo, Syria, with Turkey's cooperation through the Turkish
town of Antakya in Hatay Province.
The source who brought out the documentation now in the hands of the
U.N. is said to have been an aide to al-Douri.
The former aide said that al-Dulaimi was a major player in Saddam's
chemical weapons production projects. Al-Dulaimi has been working in
the Sunni-controlled region of Northwestern Iraq where the outlawed
Baath party now is located and produces chemical precursors.
The former aide said that ex-Iraqi military industries engineers
trained the Syrian terrorists on how to use the chemical weapons.
The 80 mm shells that landed in the Khan al-Assal region of Aleppo
contained a chemical substance very similar to what is being produced
in northwestern Iraq. It is the same type of lethal gas that was used
against the Iranians during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
U.N. investigators claim to have testimony from local residents of the
region that Syrian rebels used the sarin gas. However, there was no
evidence that the sarin gas came from the Syrian military.
"Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing
victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their
report…which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but
not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way
the victims were treated," according to Carla Del Ponte, who was a
member of the U.N. independent commission of inquiry.
"This was used on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not the
government authorities," Del Ponte said.
This U.N. preliminary finding bolsters videos available to WND which
similarly show militants firing artillery shells with chemical weapons
and canisters of poison gas captured by Syrian troops from Syrian
opposition forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he has turned over to the U.N.
the documentation from the Iraqi defector but, to date, the
international organization has yet to make a final determination on
the evidence.
U.N. investigators arrived in Syria a day before the Aug. 21 poison
gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus, killing some 1,429 people, of
which more than 400 were children.
Sources add that given Obama's declaration of a "red line" on the use
of chemical weapons, it would be in the opposition's interest to make
it appear that such weapons were used by the Syrian government.
Because the Syrian opposition has had serious military losses in
recent months, it knows that any such use of poison gas could prompt
Western intervention in the two-year Syrian civil war that could turn
the military tide in its favor.
Similarly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested that
opposition use of chemical weapons to exact a Western military
response would gut any effort by Russia and the U.S. to convene Geneva
2 summit in September at which the Syrian government would be
represented.
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