U.N. Believes Chemical Weapons Used in Syria

United Nations investigators said on Tuesday they had "reasonable grounds" to believe that limited amounts of chemical weapons had been used in Syria, and France said the nerve agent sarin had been deployed by the government. In their latest report, human rights investigators said they had received allegations that Syrian government forces and rebels had used the banned weapons, but most testimony related to their use by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Increasing reports from the battlefield of the use of chemical weapons have sounded alarm bells in the West, lending urgency to a new diplomatic push to end the two-year-old war that has killed 80,000. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that the use of chemical weapons was unacceptable. France said it was certain that sarin had been used on several occasions following tests it had carried out on samples recovered from Syria. "There is no doubt that it's the regime and its accomplices" that are responsible for use of the gas, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on France 2 television. "All options are on the table," he added. "That means either we decide not to react or we decide to react including by armed actions targeting the place where the gas is stored." Britain's U.N. ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, said evidence suggested the use of a number of different variants or combinations of chemical agents "sometimes including sarin, sometimes not". Quantities were relatively small. The United States wants more evidence about the use of chemical weapons in Syria before deciding how to respond, the White House said. White House spokesman Jay Carney said United States believes most chemical weapons in Syria remain under the government's control and was "highly sceptical" of claims that the opposition had used them. Assad's government and its opponents have accused each other of using chemical weapons. Syria's ambassador, Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, in a debate at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday, questioned the "neutrality and professionalism" of the panel. Russian Ambassador Alexey Borodavkin called for U.N. experts to be sent to Khan al-Assal in the northern Aleppo province, where an alleged chemical weapons strike took place on March 19, one of the four cited by the inquiry. However, previously a team of U.N. inspectors has been denied access to Syria and has been unable to establish whether chemical weapons have been used.