Russia Still Blaming Syrian Rebels for Chemical Weapons Attack - East Idaho News
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Russia Still Blaming Syrian Rebels for Chemical Weapons Attack

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GETTY 91013 RussiaFMLavrov?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1379492724489YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images(PARIS) — Russia may have initiated a plan to turn over Syria’s chemical weapons to international control but that doesn’t mean Moscow goes along with the widespread belief that Damascus launched a deadly sarin gas on its own people last August.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that United Nations weapons inspectors only confirmed that chemical weapons were used, not who used them.

Therefore, Lavrov told reporters in Paris alongside French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius that Bashar al-Assad’s regime cannot be held responsible for the attack that killed 1,400 people in a Damascus suburb on Aug. 21.

In fact, Lavrov restated Russia’s view that the rebels were to blame for the assault in order to get the international community to step in and help bring down Assad after 30 months of fighting that has caused more than 100,000 deaths.

All his assertions came as Fabius took the view held by the West and international observers that the Syrian government had to have launched the chemical weapons because it only has the missiles to deliver the sarin gas.  The trajectory of the rockets also indicated they came from government facilities.

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