France says it, US need to establish responsibility for Syria gas attack
Chemical-weapons agency examines Douma attack scenarios
PARIS (Reuters) – France said on Monday it would work closely with the United States on a response to this weekend’s suspected chemical attack in Syria and that both countries agreed that responsibility for the strike must be established.
Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump agreed during a telephone call on Sunday that chemical agents were used in the deadly attack on April 7, the Elysee palace said in a statement.
The assault on Douma will be a test of Macron’s credibility after he issued repeated warnings that “France will strike” if it is proven that chemical attacks have been used with lethal effect in Syria.
Macron and Trump “exchanged information and analysis confirming the use of chemical weapons,” the French presidency said.
The French readout of the conversation stopped short of apportioning blame on forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad for the attack, which one Syrian aid agency said killed at least 60 people.
“All responsibilities in this area must be clearly established,” the Elysee statement said.
It added that Macron and Trump had instructed their teams to deepen exchanges in the coming days and coordinate their efforts in the UN Security Council on Monday. The two will discuss the subject again within 48 hours, the statement said.
The White House readout was more robust. It said the two leaders had agreed that “the Assad regime must be held accountable for its continued human rights abuses” and pledged to “coordinate a strong, joint response.”
The subject of chemical weapons’ use in Syria has been a thorny issue for Macron. Standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin last May, he said he would not let differences over Syria strain relations that had soured under his predecessor, Francois Hollande. At the same time, he warned that he would not accept the use of chemical weapons, which he said was a “red line” that would draw French action, even unilaterally.
Since then, thousands more Syrians have been killed or displaced, suspected chemical weapons attacks have resumed and the surge in violence risks spilling over borders.
While Macron has repeated his threat of French strikes after persistent reports of chlorine attacks, his foreign minister and aides have been more nuanced. They have underlined that a military response would hinge on French intelligence proving both the use of chemical agents and fatalities, and said a riposte would most likely be in coordination with the US.
Analysts said Macron could no longer say his red line had not been crossed.
“Whatever the identity of the authorizing officer of this gassing, and whatever the chemical agent used... it is no longer possible to say that the French red line has not been crossed,” Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Paris-based Strategic Research Foundation, said on Twitter.
The international chemical weapons watchdog was trying to determine on Monday whether dozens of people were gassed to death in the attack.
The head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ahmet Uzumcu, said his group was responding with “grave concern” to the suspected chemical weapons attack.
The OPCW’s fact-finding mission, which was already investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war, was gathering all available material to establish whether chemical weapons were used, it said in a statement
Part of the Hague-based OPCW’s work will be to clarify what chemical agent might have been used, including the possibility that a cocktail of toxins was dropped on the neighborhood.
The suspected attack over the weekend killed at least 60 people and injured more than 1,000, according to a Syrian medical relief group.
The Syrian government denied its forces had launched any chemical assault, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said such allegations were false and a provocation.
In Douma, witnesses spoke of smelling chlorine, while doctors said the symptoms looked more like that of a nerve agent.
Prof. Raphael Pitti, a doctor who viewed videos taken at the scene, said patients appeared to have had convulsions more typical of sarin poisoning.
“Everything suggests that during the second attack, chlorine was used to conceal the use of sarin at the same time,” Pitti said.
A doctor at the scene said some patients had also suffered from hemoptysis, or the coughing up of blood, a symptom never seen in previous chemical attacks in Syria.
A joint United Nations-OPCW investigation determined in 2016 and 2017 that Syrian government forces used chlorine and sarin repeatedly throughout the civil war.