Time to end brutal Syria war: Trump

SAMPLES FROM GAS ATTACK TEST POSITIVE FOR SARIN Russia blocks UN Security Council condemnation of Damascus

WASHINGTON, April 13, (Agencies): US President Donald Trump told allies it was time to end Syria’s “brutal” civil war Wednesday, as he branded the country’s leader Bashar alAssad a “butcher” and questioned Russia’s role in a suspected chemical attack.

Trump, standing alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, called on allies to “work together to resolve the disaster” in Syria and thanked them for condemning Assad’s suspected sarin attack in Khan Sheikhun.

“Vicious slaughter of innocent civilians with chemical weapons including the barbaric killing of small and helpless children and babies must be forcefully rejected by any nation that values human life,” Trump told reporters.

“That’s a butcher. That’s a butcher. So I felt we had to do something about it. I have absolutely no doubt we did the right thing, and it was very, very successfully done,” he added.

“It is time to end this brutal civil war, defeat terrorists and allow refugees to return home.”

Trump’s comments came shortly after Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have compelled Damascus to cooperate with an investigation of the attack.

Trump said it was “certainly possible” that Russia President Vladimir Putin knew about the attack, blamed on Assad, indicating Russian officials were present at the source airbase, which Trump later bombed.

“I would like to think that they didn’t know, but certainly they could have. They were there. So we’ll find out,” he said.

Trump also praised China for abstaining during the UN vote. He met President Xi Jinping last week in Florida and spoke again to the Chinese leader on Tuesday.

“I think it’s wonderful that they abstained,” he said. “We’re honored by the vote. That’s the vote that should have taken place.”

Meanwhile, global chemical weapons investigators have gone to Turkey to collect samples as part of an inquiry into an alleged chemical weapons attack in neighbouring Syria last week that killed 87 people.

The fact-finding mission was sent by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague to gather bio-metric samples and interview survivors, sources told Reuters on Thursday.

The toxic gas attack on April 4, which killed scores of

people including children, prompted a US cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base and widened a rift between the United States and Russia, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his conflict with rebels and militants fighting to oust him.

Syrian authorities have repeatedly denied using any chemical weapons. Russian officials said the gas had been released by an air strike on a poison gas storage depot controlled by rebels. Washington said that account was not credible, and rebels have denied it.

Samples taken from the poison gas site in Syria’s Idlib governorate tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, the British delegation at the OPCW said on Thursday.

“UK scientists have analysed samples taken from Khan Sheikhoun. These have tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, or a sarin-like substance,” the delegation said during a special session on Syria at the OPCW in The Hague.

The UK result confirmed earlier testing by Turkish authorities that concluded that sarin had been used for the first time on a large scale in Syria’s civil war since 2013.

The OPCW mission will determine whether chemical weapons were used, but is not mandated to assign blame. Its findings, expected in 3-4 weeks, will be passed to a joint United Nations-OPCW investigation tasked with identifying individuals or institutions responsible for using chemical weapons.

International investigators have concluded that sarin, chlorine and sulphur mustard gas have been used in Syria’s six-year-old conflict, with government forces using chlorine and Islamic State militants using sulphur mustard.

Last week’s poison gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in the rebelheld province of Idlib near the Turkish border was the most lethal since a sarin attack on Aug 21, 2013 killed hundreds in a rebel-controlled suburb of the capital Damascus.

Russia blocked a Western-led effort at the UN Security Council on Wednesday to condemn last week’s deadly gas attack in Syria and push Moscow’s ally President Bashar al-

Assad to cooperate with international inquiries into the incident.

It was the eighth time during Syria’s six-year-old civil war that Moscow has used its veto power on the Security Council to shield Assad’s government.

In the latest veto, Russia blocked a draft resolution backed by the United States, France and Britain to denounce the attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun and tell Assad’s government to provide access for investigators and information such as flight plans.

US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, called on Moscow to stop protecting Assad and said the United States wants to work with Russia toward a political solution for Syria.

“Russia once again has chosen to side with Assad, even as the rest of the world, including the Arab world, overwhelmingly comes together to condemn this murderous regime,” Haley told the 15-member Security Council.

“If the regime is innocent, as Russia claims, the information requested in this resolution would have vindicated them.”

Russia’s deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, said the draft resolution laid blame prior to an independent investigation.

“I’m amazed that this was the conclusion. No one has yet visited the site of the crime. How do you know that?” he said.

He said the US attack on the Syrian air base “was carried out in violation of international norms.”

China, which has vetoed six resolutions on Syria since the civil war began, abstained from Wednesday’s UN vote, along with Ethiopia and Kazakhstan. Ten countries voted in favor of the text, while Bolivia joined Russia in voting no.

Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday that Britain believed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government was responsible for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria’s Idlib province, despite his rejection of culpability.

In an earlier interview with news agency AFP, Assad said the alleged poison gas attack earlier this month which the United States and its allies blamed on the Syrian military was “100 percent fabrication”.

“We believe it is highly likely that the attack was carried out by the Assad regime,” May said in a televised statement. “Apart from anything else, we believe it’s only the regime that has the capability to make such an attack.”

The British delegation at the world’s chemical weapons watchdog said on Thursday that samples taken from the alleged attack site tested positive for the nerve agent sarin.