KERRY NEWEST „RAW DATA“ ABOUT USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS BY ASSAD

MESOP 16-5-2014 – Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday acknowledged that what he described as “raw data” – viewed by him as well as by other U.S. officials – indicated that “there may have been, as France has suggested, a number of instances in which chlorine has been used in the conduct of war.”

The French had earlier alleged that they had evidence of at least 14 instances in which the Bashar al-Assad regime had deployed chlorine-filled chemical weapons against rebel-heavy areas. Human Rights Watch had been equally unequivocal in asserting that “evidence strongly suggests that Syrian government helicopters dropped barrel bombs embedded with cylinders of chlorine gas on three towns in northern Syria in mid-April 2014.”

Paris’s statements come as part of a broader diplomatic and media push in which French officials vocally criticized the Obama administration for suspending impending strikes against Damascus last September, which had been set in motion after evidence emerged that the Assad regime had crossed President Barack Obama’s red line against the use of chemical weapons. Syria and its Russian backers had bragged that the United Nations Security Council resolution forestalling the strikes – under which Syria agreed to join the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and give up portions of its nonconventional arsenal in exchange for the West standing down – represented an outright diplomatic victory. Kerry’s acknowledged on Thursday that the use of chlorine weapons “would be against the agreements of the chemical weapons treaty and against the weapons convention that Syria has signed up to,” a reference to the CWC’s prohibition on the use of chlorine-based chemical weapons. The Wall Street Journal had a day earlier come to a similar conclusion, noting that the agreement “is in jeopardy on several fronts, with the regime in Damascus facing growing allegations that it violated the agreement by attacking rebels and civilians with chlorine gas.”