U.S. AMBASSADOR POWER'S REMARKS ON SYRIA'S CHEMICAL WEAPONS

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Samantha Power
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
New York, NY
April 16, 2015
AS DELIVERED

Thank you all for coming out. The first thing I want to do is to encourage you to, later this afternoon, have the experience that the Council just had, which is to listen to three remarkable individuals who testified to the experiences that they have had inside Syria, related to Syrian chemical weapons use – chlorine use most recently. And in the case of Qusai Zakarya, his experience of being left for dead in August 2013 in the chemical weapons attack in Moadamiya.

What the Council heard were testimonies from Dr. Tennari, who is a Syrian Arab Red Crescent-affiliated physician in the town of Sarmin, who dealt with the chlorine attacks that occurred in March – at great risk to himself and the other medical professionals he was working with tried to resuscitate and care for the people who came to his hospital, his impromptu field clinic, you might say, and were in desperate need of help. They were choking, they were vomiting and they bore all of the tell-tale signs of chemical weapons use. None of them, as he’ll describe, had fragments, shell fragments, or any of the kinds of injuries you would expect from conventional weapons use, or even from conventional barrel bombs use – if you can put it that way.

So Dr. Tennari described the horror of being in a situation where you can’t help everyone who comes to you: when parents are bringing their children and you are trying to resuscitate them and you cannot because you don’t have the medical supplies and because the toxic chemicals are so overpowering. We also heard from Dr. Zaher Sahloul who is the President of the Syrian-American Medical Society, who has made innumerable medical missions to Syria, who raises money here in this country and elsewhere to try to fund medical supplies, to try to care for people who suffer all injuries and ailments. And Zaher is just back from a medical mission where he talked to and saw the doctors and the survivors of the Sarmin attack, as well as others.

In terms of the Council, we held this meeting – we brought the Council members together with these remarkable individuals because the Security Council has come together to pass Security Council resolution 2118, which has come a long way in dismantling Assad’s declared chemical weapons program. But that resolution, which was a resolution – unusual for Syria that all members of the council were able to agree upon, and very much the product of U.S.-Russian cooperation in dismantling the Syrian chemical weapons program – has not resulted in the end of chemical weapons use in Syria. And the council, as you know, came together again recently in resolution 2209 to make very clear that chlorine use is a form of Syrian chemical weapons use. It’s not what people think of necessarily. They think of it being a household product. But when you stick it in a barrel bomb and you turn it into a toxic weapon, it is prohibited by the chemical weapons convention, it is prohibited by resolution 2118 and it is made very clear that it is utterly condemned and prohibited by resolution 2209.

So what we’ve done today is brought individuals who can testify to what happened; brought the facts to the council in as rapid and moving a way as we could do, and it is now in our view, incumbent on the Council to go further than we have been able to come to this point, to get past the old divisions, to draw on the unity that we have managed to show on the single issue of chemical weapons, and stop these attacks from happening. Now the form that that takes, of course, getting everything through 15 members of the Security Council is extremely challenging – there were 4 vetoes issued on Syria, on attempted Syrian resolutions in the past – but we feel as though anybody who witnessed what we just witnessed, and what you will hear from these individuals later today I hope, can’t be anything but changed, can’t be anything but motivated. And we need an attribution mechanism so we know precisely who carried out these attacks; all of the evidence of course shows that they come from helicopters, only the Assad regime has helicopters; that’s very clear to us. But we need to move forward in a manner that also makes it very clear to all Council members, and then those people responsible for these attacks have to be held accountable.

The very last thing I’d say, because I know there’s a lot of skepticism about accountability, because of the veto that we experienced when we put forward, with our partners, a referral of the crimes in Syria to the ICC: it is true that we failed to secure an ICC referral out of the Security Council, but it is not true that that means that accountability will not happen in Syria. Individuals who are responsible for attacks like that will be held accountable, and the documentary record is being built, the testimonies are being gathered and the long arm of justice is taking more time than any of us would wish right now, but this documentary record will be used at some point in a court of law and the perpetrators of these crimes need to bear that in mind.

Reporter: Ambassador, can you describe to us what the atmosphere was like in the room when you saw and heard this evidence?

Ambassador Power: The only analogue I can come up with is the experience of seeing the Caesar photos. I mean, the video, in particular, of the attempts to resuscitate the children – if there was a dry eye in the room, I didn’t see it. It was – it’s just devastating to see the facts of what this regime is doing. So people were visibly moved, people had questions, very fair questions, about “how do you know this?” and “what are the symptoms?” But for the most part, almost every Council member prefaced what they said by saying, “forgive me if I don’t use diplomatic language, but I am so moved and so overwhelmed by what I have seen,” and then they proceeded with their comments. It was an extremely unusual and very, very emotional meeting.

Reporter: How do you see an attribution mechanism – you mentioned an attribution mechanism?

Ambassador Power: You know, we have to work through the modalities on this. Traditionally, criminal responsibility is best established in a criminal tribunal, which is why we and so many Council members supported an ICC referral. But in this instance, that has not proven possible at this point. And of course, the Syrian authorities are in no positon to judge themselves, given that they are gassing their own people and dropping barrel bombs on civilian neighborhoods. So we need to think through what are the right modalities for an attribution mechanism. The OPCW already, as you know, has fact-finding missions that it has dispatched and they have produced very important layers and layers of testimonies and eyewitness reports and have shown, and reported with high confidence, that chlorine is being used as a chemical weapon in Syria,

systematically. But what the OPCW has never done is point the finger and establish attribution. And that has not been in their mandate up until this point. Bear in mind, again, that the traditional model for OPCW is parties to the chemical weapons convention who want the OPCW’s help getting rid of their chemical weapons stockpile or monitoring it – we haven’t had a circumstance like this where we have a party to the chemical weapons convention that is still prepared to use chemical weapons. And so OPCW and the UN Security Council have to come together and deal with a devastating and grotesque historical anomaly.

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE'S REMARKS TO UN SECURITY COUNCIL REGARDING SYRIA

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 

Remarks at the Security Council Stakeout Following Consultations on Syria

Samantha Power

U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations 

New York, NY

September 4, 2014

AS DELIVERED

Good afternoon everyone. Special Coordinator Sigrid Kaag just updated the Council on the OPCW-UN Joint Mission’s progress on eliminating Syria’s declared chemical weapons program. She outlined the U.S. ship Cape Ray’s completed destruction of Syria’s most dangerous declared chemicals and discussed plans to destroy the remaining chemical weapons production facilities.

She also noted the Technical Secretariat’s continuing work to address discrepancies and omissions related to the original Syrian declaration. On this point, a number of Council members stressed how important it was to resolve questions with regards to the Syrian Government’s omissions and discrepancies in its original declaration.

Some Council members raised their concerns about the Syrian government’s use of chlorine gas, as reported by the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry last month.

While the Joint Mission’s formal role winds down on September 30, Council members noted that the elimination effort is not complete. The Council expressed thanks to Secretary-General Ban for his willingness to exercise good offices in furtherance of the implementation of Security Council resolution 2118. Some Council members, including the United States, expressed a desire for monthly updates on continuing efforts to completely eliminate the Syrian CW program.

One final note on today’s consultations: Earlier this morning, the Council met with the troop and police contributing countries to the UN Mission in Liberia. As you are all aware, Liberia is the epicenter of the tragic Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Special Representative Landgren, joined by the UNMIL force leadership, briefed on the many efforts that UNMIL is undertaking to protect and safeguard all UN personnel, notably the UNMIL peacekeepers, who continue to serve commendably to help Liberia consolidate its hard-won peace and security gains more than a decade since the end of that country's civil war. Under-Secretary-General Ladsous and Assistant-Secretary-General Banbury also highlighted the continued commitment of the UN system, including in support of the efforts of Dr. Nabarro and the World Health Organization, to respond fully and promptly to the Ebola outbreak across the region. We also heard from several of UNMIL's largest troop and police contributors who attended the briefing, many of whom expressed their continued and strong commitment to Liberia.

Let me just conclude, if I may, with a comment in my national capacity on the session from which I’ve just come. I want to stress that much more work still needs to be done on Syria’s chemical weapons program. The international community must continue to press for the resolution of all discrepancies and omissions in Syria’s original declaration. We must ensure that the Syrian government destroys its remaining facilities for producing chemical weapons within the mandated time frames and without the repeated delays by the Assad regime that plagued earlier removal efforts. We must also address the Syrian military’s reported systematic use of chlorine gas in opposition areas, as described by the Commission of Inquiry’s August report.

And as we work toward these goals, we need to keep front and center the fact that Syria is still wracked with violence of the worst sort. The Syrian government has increased its reliance on barrel bombs to wage a brutal aerial campaign, targeting schools, residential buildings, and crowded streets. In the first six months of this year, the Assad regime has dropped an average of 260 barrel bombs a month – this is three times more than during the same period last year. And it continues to launch rockets into neighborhoods, including hundreds of rockets that struck the neighborhood of Jobar over the past week, utterly destroying entire city blocks.

The progress we’ve made over the past year on chemical weapons, and the progress in Syria, will never be complete or real until the violence ends and steps toward a political solution begin. Thank you. And I’d be happy to take a few questions.

Reporter: Thanks. So, Ms. Kaag spoke to us in the briefing room just now and one of the things that she brought up were volume discrepancies related to Syrian declarations, which were repeatedly revised. Were there any details discussed in the Council about the volumes? And is the US concerned about this particular type of discrepancy, particularly in light of the recent expansion of territory under control of ISIL?

Ambassador Power: The United States is concerned about all discrepancies, also the potential that there are real omissions in the declaration. And we are working principally through the OPCW, which has a technical secretariat that is engaging with the Syrians on these issues. We are concerned, though, for two reasons: one, the reason you mention, of course, which is that extremist terrorist groups who have committed some of the most vile acts just in the last few days before our very eyes and who have terrorized everyone they come into contact with in Syria and Iraq, that these weapons, or weapon stocks, if they are left, could fall into their hands.

But let’s be clear. There is one actor that has actually used chemical weapons, in mass, killing, you know, thousands, or at least several thousands of people in the August 21 attack and many allegations of other use prior to the effort to get rid of Syria’s chemical weapons program. So, there are two reasons or concerns about omissions, gaps, and discrepancies, and that’s why the Security Council intends to stay very much on top of this and to press them, to press both the international actors who continue to engage on the ground and to press those who have leverage over the regime, to be pushing the regime to be fully forthcoming.

Reporter: Thank you, Madame President. How worried are you about the possibility that the ISIS/ISIL has acquired some kind of chemical weapons? Also, your administration has been resisting international calls to interfere in Syria, militarily. Last week, Syria foreign minister offered cooperation with the US against the terrorists in his country. What does it take for the US to interfere in this conflict? Thank you.

Ambassador Power: Thank you. I’d say first that President Obama I think was pretty clear over the last couple days about his intention to galvanize an international coalition to degrade and destroy ISIL. Inherent in that is a recognition of the threat that ISIL poses everywhere. Certainly if there are chemical weapons left in Syria, there will be a risk that those weapons fall into ISIL’s hands. And we can only imagine what a group like that would do if in possession of such a weapon.

With regard to the Assad regime, I would say first of all that the actors on the ground who have fought over the last 7 months the most strenuously against ISIL have been the moderate opposition, have been the Sunni opposition groups. And so as the president has said, a critical complement to any effort, comprehensive effort, to deal with ISIL will involve strengthening those groups. And it is still our belief that the Assad regime – its brutality, the barrel bomb attacks, the possible chlorine use now, the previous chemical weapons attacks – these are recruiting tools that extremists have used to attract foreign terrorist fighters to Syria.

Tactics of the kind that they’re employing against civilians, against residential neighborhoods, against schools, are tactics that can never be consistent with a lasting peace. They’re terrorizing tactics. So you have on the one hand a monstrous terrorist group and you have on the other hand a monstrous group – a monstrous regime, rather, carrying out attacks that terrorize their own people, that kill civilians, that fire indiscriminately on areas that you know are going to affect the lives of civilians and kill and injure women and children and so forth. So as President Obama has said, the Syrian people should not have to choose between two forms of terror: terror inflicted by the regime and terror inflicted by ISIL.

Reporter: On chemical weapons again, given the discrepancies and the concern you have expressed, what happens exactly after September 30th? Is there any appetite on the Council for further action?

Ambassador Power: Again, there’s a process playing itself out, in – through the OPCW executive secretariat, where the concerns that we and other member states have are being raised. Some of them have been addressed at the margins by the regime up to this point, but there’s a process that’s ongoing. What is, was very clear in the Council session today among members states is while there was great appreciation of the work of Sigrid Kaag and the Joint Mission, who operated under impossible circumstances, you know, building the airplane as they were flying it, and who have succeeded in getting rid of nearly all of the declared chemical weapons -- there’s just some destruction, again, as you know, that’s underway – there was a very strong desire on the part of Council members to stay on top of the gaps and declaration.

So you won’t see the Council oversight or the Council relationship to this issue abate after September 30th in any way. You will continue to see briefings, we will continue to interact with you on what we know and on what has been achieved, and what hasn’t been achieved. I mean, 2118 has not been fulfilled. And it won’t be fulfilled until this Council has confidence that the terms of the chemical weapons convention has been met.

Thanks.

SECRETARY KERRY'S PRESS STATEMENT ON ALEPO BARREL-BOMBINGS

FROM:  STATE DEPARTMENT
Barrel Bombs in Aleppo
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
February 4, 2014

Each and every day that the barrel-bombing of Aleppo continues, the Asad regime reminds the world of its true colors. It is the latest barbaric act of a regime that has committed organized, wholesale torture, used chemical weapons, and is starving whole communities by blocking delivery of food to Syrian civilians in urgent need.

Now, with air raids killing dozens more civilians in just the past few days, destroying apartment buildings, and barrel bombs striking a mosque today, the staggering civilian toll dramatically climbs. Each and every barrel bomb filled with metal shrapnel and fuel launched against innocent Syrians underscores the barbarity of a regime that has turned its country into a super magnet for terror. Given this horrific legacy, the Syrian people would never accept as legitimate a government including Asad.

While the opposition and the international community are focused on ending the war, as outlined in the Geneva communiqué, the regime is single-mindedly focused on inflicting further destruction to strengthen its hand on the battlefield and undermining hopes for the success of the Geneva II process.

THE WHITE HOUSE CONDEMNS ONGOING AIR ASSAULT IN SYRIA

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 
Statement by Press Secretary Jay Carney on the Ongoing Air Assaults by the Syrian Government

The United States condemns the ongoing air assault by Syrian government forces on civilians, including the indiscriminate use of SCUD missiles and barrel bombs in and around Aleppo over the last week. The attacks over the weekend killed more than 300 people, many of them children. The Syrian government must respect its obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population. The Syrian government must fulfill its November commitment to do more to facilitate the safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance, so that millions of Syrian men, women, and children have access to urgently needed services. To bring the suffering of the Syrian people to an end, it is imperative that Syrians reach a comprehensive and durable political solution to end the crisis in Syria. The United States remains committed to advancing a political settlement to help end the bloodshed in Syria.