U.N. Security Council to meet on Syria attack claims

UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. Security Council will meet at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) on Wednesday to news of a chemical weapons attack that would have killed hundreds of people in Syria, diplomats said.

Office of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "surprised" by the reports of the attack and that the UN inspectors in Syria to probe allegations were earlier in talks with Damascus. The Security Council members France, Britain, United States, Luxembourg and South Korea asked the meeting to be held in the form of closed consultations, a diplomat said. Paris and London were to send a joint letter Wednesday to Secretary General asking him to instruct the UN experts to Syria to go to the scene to investigate.

The United States demanded that Syria will have immediate access to the site, while Russia, a close ally of the Syrian government, called on the opposition claims a "provocation". The main Syrian opposition group says that up to 1,300 people died in a chemical weapons attack Wednesday in rebel areas near Damascus. The video distributed by activists, the authenticity of the roommates could not immediately be verified, showed the doctors caring for children suffocating and hospitals are overwhelmed.

The aim of the consultations of the Security Council is to "test the water and report" to the 15 members, but not expected to result in a formal position, said one diplomat. The diplomat also said that it would be difficult for the UN experts to investigate the scene where the alleged attack was not one of the three in which the Syrian regime had agreed to UN inspections.

This means that the head of the U.N. Experts in Syria, Ake Sellstrom of Sweden must negotiate access to the new site with the Syrian authorities, the diplomat said. The U.N. Sellstrom's statement said the team is "following the situation in Syria with care, and remains fully committed to the research process, acting on behalf of the Secretary General. "Professor Sellstrom is in talks with the Syrian government on all matters relating to the alleged use of chemical weapons, including the last reported incident."

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