U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon said Monday there was no time to waste as U.N. experts prepared to investigate a suspected Syrian chemical attack, with Washington suggesting the probe was already too late.<\/p>\n
“Every hour counts. We cannot afford any more delays,” Ban told reporters in Seoul, hours before a U.N. team was due to inspect the site of last week’s alleged chemical attack near Damascus.<\/p>\n
The Syrian authorities green-lighted the inspection on Sunday, but U.S. officials said it was too little, too late, arguing that persistent shelling of the site in recent days had “corrupted” the site.<\/p>\n
“The world is watching Syria,” the secretary general said, stressing once again that the U.N. experts must be allowed to conduct a “full, thorough and unimpeded” investigation.<\/p>\n
“We cannot allow impunity in what appears to be a grave crime against humanity,” said Ban who was wrapping up a five-day visit to his homeland, South Korea.<\/p>\n
Syria’s opposition says more than 1,300 people died when regime forces unleashed chemical weapons against rebel-held towns east and southwest of Damascus Wednesday, while Doctors Without Borders said 355 people had died of “neurotoxic” symptoms.<\/p>\n
Damascus has strongly denied it carried out such an attack, instead blaming the rebels.<\/p>\n
Ban said the success of the U.N. investigation was “in everyone’s interest” and would have an important “deterrent impact” on the possible future use of chemical weapons.<\/p>\n
“If proven, any use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances is a serious violation of international law and an outrageous crime,” he added.<\/p>\n
Source: Agence France Presse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon said Monday there was no time to waste as U.N. experts prepared to investigate a suspected Syrian chemical attack, with Washington suggesting the probe was already too late.<\/p>\n
“Every hour counts. We cannot afford any more delays,” Ban told reporters in Seoul, hours before a U.N. team was due to inspect the site of last week’s alleged chemical attack near Damascus.<\/p>\n
The Syrian authorities green-lighted the inspection on Sunday, but U.S. officials said it was too little, too late, arguing that persistent shelling of the site in recent days had “corrupted” the site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}