MOSCOW, October 1 (Itar-Tass) - Russia will seek to find those guilty for the use of chemical weapons near the Syrian city of Aleppo in March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.
“We proceed from the assumption that the episode on August 21 was not the only one, which Ake Sellstrom’s committee (the U.N. inspectors) should investigate,” Lavrov said. He noted that the group of U.N inspectors had ended their work in Syria and are on the way back to New York. “As far as I am concerned, they have examined several more places, but the committee was not dispatched to the suburbs of Aleppo yet, where the incident with the use of chemical weapons occurred in March,” the minister added. “We want to understand whether the report will be complete or incomplete, because the U.N. mission did not have enough time to visit all sites. We will wait for their report,” Lavrov said.
In any case Russia will seek to find those guilty for the March incident, Lavrov pledged. “We will seek for the truth,” he noted.
“The information concerning our investigation of the incident near Aleppo on March 19 is available to all members of the U.N. Security Council and, as far as I am concerned, it is even in open access,” Lavrov said. The Russian foreign minister noted that “everything is laid down there in the professional way and we have no doubts that the toxic agent sarin, which was used near the city of Aleppo on March 19, is home-made and was made in clandestine conditions.” “We also have the information that during the notorious episode on August 21, when the chemical weapons were used and this is the already proved fact, sarin of approximately the same origin as the neurotoxic agent used on March 19, but only in a larger concentration was used,” the minister added.