NEW YORK
The U.S. has drafted a resolution to the UN Security Council calling for investigations into chemical weapon attacks in Syria.
The draft resolution comes after an increase in chlorine gas attacks in Syria – despite an international program to destroy the country’s chemical weapons stockpile.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) director-general – Turkey’s Ahmet Uzuncu – are being called on to establish a “Joint Investigative Mechanism” within 15 days of the resolution’s adoption.
The committee would consist of experts from the UN, as well as the OPCW, which had earlier pointed to the repeated and systematic use of poison gas in the Syrian conflict but did not say who was responsible.
If the joint committee is established it would file its first report within 90 days, while Ban would have to report on its progress to the Security Council once a month.
Syria's civil war, now in its fifth year, was triggered by a violent crackdown on anti-regime protesters by the government of President Bashar al-Assad in early 2011.
Half of the country’s population has since been displaced by the violence, with nearly four million Syrians currently seeking refuge in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.
