UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon received Sunday the report of the UN fact-finding group on the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria. He will brief the UN Security Council on the findings Monday morning, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters Sunday.
"The report by the United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic has been turned over to the secretary-general," Nesirky said in a note emailed to reporters here.
"It was transmitted today, 15 September, to the secretary- general by Professor Ake Sellstrom, the head of the Mission, and the secretary-general will provide it to the Member States tomorrow morning," the spokesman added.
"On Monday morning, the secretary-general will brief the Security Council on the report during its closed consultations," he said.
Following his briefing at the 15-nation Security Council, Ban will speak to reporters at around 12:50 p.m. EDT (1650 GMT) Monday, the spokesman said.
The text of the report will be made available on Monday morning on the website of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, which is: http://www.un.org/disarmament/, the spokesman added.
On Sept. 2, samples collected by the United Nations chemical weapons inspection team in Syria were transferred from The Hague to laboratories for analysis. They were from the site of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ghouta area of Damascus, the Syrian capital on Aug. 21, when over 1,000 people were claimed to be killed.
The UN has said the analyses would be conducted in laboratories in Europe "strictly adhering to the highest established standards of verification recognized by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)."
The UN fact-finding group, led by Swedish specialist Ake Sellstrom, was created by the UN chief in March at the request of the Syrian government. The investigators were ordered out of the war-torn country on Aug. 31 to return to The Hague.
The team, which was initially set to investigate the alleged March 19 chemical attacks on Khan al-Asal in the northern province of Aleppo and two other undisclosed sites, arrived at the war-torn nation on Aug. 18.
The investigators were later told to travel to the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, where chemical weapons were allegedly used on Aug. 21, to collect evidence.
The UN probe team is mandated to find out whether chemical weapons were used in the Middle East country, but not who used them.
Since fighting began in March 2011 between the Syrian government and opposition groups, as many as 100,000 people have been killed, including more than 7,000 children, reports said.
In addition, almost two million have fled to neighboring countries and a further four million have been internally displaced. At least 6.8 million Syrians need urgent humanitarian assistance, half of them are children.
簡明釋義：聯合國祕書長潘基文周日收到聯合國調查組的關於敘利亞化壆武器的報告。報道說，敘利亞政府和反對派之間的戰爭在2011年3月開始，至今兩年多的時間內多達10萬人被殺害，其中包括7000多名兒童。
