U.N. gas-attacks resolution vetoed

UNITED NATIONS — Russia on Tuesday vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution that would extend the work of inspectors seeking to determine who is responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria, accusing the United States of calling the vote “to show up and dishonor Russia.”

Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, tried unsuccessfully to postpone the vote until next month, after the joint body comprising investigators from the U.N. and the chemical weapons watchdog publishes a report Thursday on blame for the April 4 chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 90 people.

Russia’s call for a delay needed nine “yes” votes in the 15-member Security Council but got only four — Russia, China, Bolivia and Kazakhstan. It was opposed by eight council members with three abstentions.

The U.S.-backed resolution was then put to a vote and received 11 “yes” votes; two “no” votes, from Russia and Bolivia; and two abstentions, by China and Kazakhstan.

Nebenzia said Russia, a close ally of Syria, has criticized the Joint Investigative Mechanism. Last year, Joint Investigative Mechanism inspectors determined that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government was behind at least three attacks involving chlorine gas — which Russia disputed — and the Islamic State extremist group was responsible for at least one involving mustard gas, which Moscow believed.

Nebenzia sharply criticized U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, saying she pressed for Tuesday’s vote before the Joint Investigative Mechanism’s report knowing that Russia would veto, and accused her of breaking the unity of the Security Council, which is important to most members.

“But what’s important for you is something else,” he said, directing his remarks to Haley. “You need to show up Russia and show that Russia is guilty of not extending the [mechanism]. In fact, you’re the one who’s begging for confrontation.”

Nebenzia said Russia doesn’t want the Joint Investigative Mechanism terminated.

“Don’t try to create the impression that the [mechanism] will be a dead letter unless we adopt this resolution today,” Nebenzia said before the vote. “Maybe you’re trying to do this intentionally to prove to the world that Russia wants to close down the [mechanism] at any cost. That is not true. We’re ready to return to extending the [mechanism] after the publication of the report and after we discuss it.”

When the council discusses an extension, he said, Russia will insist on amending the Joint Investigative Mechanism mandate, which doesn’t expire until Nov. 17, to ensure “the professionalism and impartiality that we want to see.”

Haley, who is currently in Africa, said in a statement after the vote that “Russia has once again demonstrated it will do whatever it takes to ensure the barbaric Assad regime never faces consequences for its continued use of chemicals as weapons.”

“This is the ninth time Russia has protected Assad and his team of murderers by blocking the Security Council from acting,” she said. “In doing so, Russia once again sides with the dictators and terrorists who use these weapons.”

But at Tuesday’s meeting, U.S. Deputy Ambassador Michele Sison raised the possibility of another vote.

She called on all Security Council members “to take up this vital matter once again” and “preserve this council’s unity in the face of Syrian chemical weapons attacks” by extending the Joint Investigative Mechanism mandate.

U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre of France, the current council president, also called on all council members to come together to allow the Joint Investigative Mechanism mandate’s renewal before it expires in mid-November. “This is our historic responsibility,” he said.

Elsewhere, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the Islamic State militant group now controls only 5 percent of Syria’s territory. The figure comes after the group lost major strongholds and key urban areas across the country, including its self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa.

Russia-backed Syrian troops are pushing deeper into the eastern Syrian town of Mehkan, one of the few still held by the Islamic State.

Speaking at a conference in the Philippines, Shoigu said Monday that “terrorists” — a term the Syrian government and its allies use for all armed opposition, including militant groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida’s Syria affiliate — controlled more than 70 percent of the country before Russia began its air operation at the end of 2015 to support Assad’s offensive against Islamic State militants and opposition forces.

In 2015, the Islamic State briefly held nearly half of Syria’s territory after the militants captured the historic city of Palmyra, parts of the northern Kurdish town of Kobani, and the central desert. They also reached the city of Hassakeh in the northeast.

Later that year, the Islamic State started suffering setbacks that culminated with the fall last week of the northern city of Raqqa. The Islamic State has also lost wide areas that it once controlled in Iraq, including the northern city of Mosul, the largest city the group had ever captured. U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces retook Mosul in July.

On Tuesday, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said government forces captured several points inside the town of Mehkan just south of Mayadeen, the Islamic State stronghold that Syrian troops captured earlier this month. Government forces are now advancing toward the town of Boukamal, the last that is still fully held by the extremists.

Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue and Nataliya Vasilyeva of The Associated Press.