Possible Use of Chemicals

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations will launch an investigation into the “possible use of chemical weapons in Syria,” Secretary General Ban Ki moon announced Thursday.

Speaking to reporters at U.N. headquarters, Ban said that his top advisers are still trying to determine the scope of the mission, the composition of the team and the steps required to guarantee the safety of U.N. personnel during their probe.

Their immediate task will be to investigate the possible use of chemical weapons in an attack Tuesday on a village near Aleppo. But Ban hinted that the team’s mandate could be broader, saying “there are other allegations of similar cases involving the reported use of chemical weapons.”

The Obama administration signaled its support for a wide-ranging probe, with U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice saying in a statement that officials back an investigation that “pursues any and all credible allegations of the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria.”

Although the facts have not been established, President Obama said Wednesday that he was “deeply skeptical of any claim that it was the opposition that used chemical weapons,” noting that only the regime has the capacity to carry out such an attack.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 26 people, including 16 Syrian soldiers, died in the attack. But the observatory’s director, who uses the pseudonym Rami Abdulrahman, said he could confirm only “that there was a rocket attack but not that any chemicals were used.”

Photographs posted online by the official Syrian Arab News Agency showed alleged victims in hospital beds flanked by medical staff in surgical masks. State television featured an interview with an elderly man wearing a face mask and a white bandage on his forehead. “They fired a missile, and it exploded with something like a powder,” the man said.

In the same TV report, a doctor said the patients appeared to have been exposed to “phosphorus material or some poisonous material,” which he said had led to “heavy vomiting and difficulty in breathing, almost appearing like extreme suffocation cases.”

Russia’s U.N. envoy, Vitaly I Churkin, denounced the European initiative, which is backed by the United States and many other council members, as a delaying tactic and insisted that Ban limit its immediate investigation into the single case in Aleppo. “There is just one allegation of the use of chemical weapons,” he said. “This is really a way to delay the need for immediate urgent investigation of allegations pertaining to March 19 by raising all sorts of issues.”

Churkin made it clear that the 15-nation council would not be in a position to agree on a plan for a wider probe into possible use of chemical weapons in Syria.

But Ban said that he has authority to act on his own. Ban hinted that his mandate would go beyond the specific Syrian request, saying that he hoped the mission “would contribute to ensuring the safety and security of chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria. The investigation mission is to look into the specific incident brought to my attention by the Syrian government. I am, of course, aware that there are other allegations of similar cases involving the reported use of chemical weapons.”