Reuters
People flee fighting on a Syrian street on May 18. A new UN report cites systematic war crimes.
By John Newland, Staff Writer, NBC News
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday defended his plan to supply missiles to Syria’s government, hours after the United Nations urged against all weapons transfers to the war-torn country.
A U.N. commission report called on the international community to restrict arms transfers to the country, saying it would only worsen a conflict that has hit “new levels of cruelty and brutality.”
Underlining the U.N. report, France said on Tuesday it was certain that the nerve agent sarin had been used in Syria on several occasions following tests it carried out on samples recovered from the country.
“These tests show the presence of sarin in various samples in our possession,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement, adding that the test results had been handed to the United Nations. “France is certain that sarin gas was used several times in Syria in limited areas.”
Putin said the scheduled sale of highly advanced Russian anti-aircraft missiles to the Assad regime would fall under “transparent and internationally recognized contracts,” but confirmed the shipment had not yet been delivered.
The U.N. report asked nations to “counter the escalation of the conflict” by not providing weaponry “given the clear risk that the arms will be used to commit serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law.”
Sergei Ilnitsky / EPA
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday spoke against supplying Syrian rebels with weapons.
“There is a human cost to the political impasse that has come to characterize the response of the international community to the war in Syria,” the report said.
“The desperation of the parties to the conflict has resulted in new levels of cruelty and brutality, bolstered by an increase in the availability of weapons. Increased arm transfers hurt the prospect of a political settlement to the conflict, fuel the multiplication of armed actors at the national and regional levels and have devastating consequences for civilians,” it added.
Despite the weapons deal, Putin said any attempt to intervene militarily in Syria would be “doomed to fail” and echoed the UN call for restricting arms sales – but only to rebel forces trying to overthrow Assad.
“Any attempts to influence the situation by force through direct military action is doomed to fail and would unavoidably bring about large humanitarian casualties,” he said.
The U.N. commission report said “war crimes and crimes against humanity have become a daily reality in Syria,” citing the suspected use of chemical weapons, thermobaric bombs, sieges and massacres.
The report called for peace talks and war crimes tribunals, saying that the global community had been “silent on the issue of accountability.”
“The documented violations are consistent and widespread, evidence of a concerted policy implemented by the leaders of Syria’s military and government,” it said.
Giving the most detailed accounts to date from an official international body, the report documents four suspected chemical weapons attacks in March and April, as well as 17 possible massacres between Jan. 15 and May 15.
It came down more harshly on Assad’s troops than on the rebel factions, though it said both sides had committed war crimes, a judgment it also made in February.
“Government forces and affiliated militia have committed murder, torture, rape, forcible displacement, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts,” the report said.
It reported the “systematic” use of “summary execution.”
Rebel forces, the report added, have been guilty of execution, torture, hostage-taking and pillaging, though it concluded that war crimes committed by the opposition had not reached the “intensity and scale of those committed by government forces” and their allies, which include Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, which leads the increasingly varied groups of rebel forces, reacted angrily to the report, citing what he perceived as an emphasis on words over actions.
“The last two years we saw nothing from the UN or human rights groups, with all the crimes committed by the regime against civilians,” the FSA’s Abu Muhanad said, adding: “We are frustrated. … How long will we keep demanding help and no one is doing anything?”
The Syrian National Coalition, an international group supporting the rebel fighters, said it had looked at the report “with interest.”
“The coalition would like to express its condemnation of all types of … breaches of laws and international conventions, no matter the side that commits it,” a spokesman for the group said. “On the other hand, there is no way to compare between people who throw tons of bombs on an unarmed population, killing children and women in order to eliminate the people’s revolution, and those who use light or medium weapons to protect the people.”
An estimated 4.3 million Syrians have been displaced by the war, and 1.6 million have fled the country, the UN report said, adding that another 6.8 million have been trapped by fighting.
Vuk Jeremić, the Serbian president of U.N. General Assembly, told the group last month that at least 80,000 people had died during the two-year war, most of them civilians.
NBC News Producer Albina Kovalyova contributed to this report.
Zaatari, one of the largest refugee camps, is five miles from the Syrian border in neighboring Jordan. Of the estimated 120,000 displaced Syrians living there, half are children. In this first of a special series, ITV’s John Ray reports from a makeshift children’s clinic inside the camp.
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