France said on Tuesday it was "certain" that the nerve agent sarin had been used in Syria, underlining a United Nations report that said the civil war had reached  “new levels of cruelty and brutality.”

Tests carried out on samples showed the gas had been used "several times in Syria in limited areas," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement, according to Reuters.

The results of the tests have been handed to the UN, Fabius added - although details of the French claims were not immediately available. It was not clear which side had supposedly used the chemical weapon.

It came hours after a UN report said investigators had "reasonable grounds" to believe that limited amounts of chemical weapons had been used in Syria in a conflict where brutality was now a tactic of war. 

The report asked nations to “counter the escalation of the conflict” by not providing weaponry “given the clear risk that the arms will be used to commit serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law.”

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It said the supply of more arms to either side would only worsen a conflict that has hit “new levels of cruelty and brutality.”

When asked about France's announcement, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she had seen the reports and added that the U.S. is "seeking more information."

"So, for the time being, I would refer you all to the French government," Psaki said.

She also said there were no final conclusions to report regarding the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria, but she added that the U.S. still believes that the opposition doesn't have the "ability to use chemical weapons."

"We remain firm in our belief that if there were use, that the use would be coming from the regime," Psaki said. "We don't have any reason to believe -- there's no new information on that [it] is coming from the opposition. But again, we're still focused on seeing this process through, gathering facts, working with our allies. And I don't have any new updates for you on that."

Russian President Vladimir Putin defended his plan to supply missiles to Syria’s government, saying the scheduled sale of highly advanced Russian anti-aircraft missiles to the Assad regime would fall under “transparent and internationally recognized contracts.”

Despite the deal, Putin said any attempt to intervene militarily in Syria would be “doomed to fail” and echoed the UN call for restricting arms sales – but only to rebel forces trying to overthrow Assad.

"Any attempts to influence the situation by force through direct military action is doomed to fail and would unavoidably bring about large humanitarian casualties," he said.

The UN commission report said “war crimes and crimes against humanity have become a daily reality in Syria," citing the suspected use of chemical weapons, thermobaric bombs, sieges and massacres.

"The desperation of the parties to the conflict has resulted in new levels of cruelty and brutality, bolstered by an increase in the availability of weapons. Increased arm transfers hurt the prospect of a political settlement to the conflict, fuel the multiplication of armed actors at the national and regional levels and have devastating consequences for civilians," it added.

The report called for peace talks and war crimes tribunals, saying that the global community had been “silent on the issue of accountability.” 

“The documented violations are consistent and widespread, evidence of a concerted policy implemented by the leaders of Syria’s military and government,” it said.

Giving the most detailed accounts to date from an official international body, the report documents four suspected chemical weapons attacks in March and April, as well as 17 possible massacres between Jan. 15 and May 15.

It came down more harshly on Assad’s troops than on the rebel factions, though it said both sides had committed war crimes, a judgment it also made in February.

“Government forces and affiliated militia have committed murder, torture, rape, forcible displacement, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts,” the report said.

It reported the “systematic” use of “summary execution.”

Rebel forces, the report added, have been guilty of execution, torture, hostage-taking and pillaging, though it concluded that war crimes committed by the opposition had not reached the “intensity and scale of those committed by government forces” and their allies, which include Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, which leads the increasingly varied groups of rebel forces, reacted angrily to the report, citing what he perceived as an emphasis on words over actions.

"The last two years we saw nothing from the UN or human rights groups, with all the crimes committed by the regime against civilians," the FSA's Abu Muhanad said, adding: "We are frustrated. ... How long will we keep demanding help and no one is doing anything?"

The Syrian National Coalition, an international group supporting the rebel fighters, said it had looked at the report "with interest."

"The coalition would like to express its condemnation of all types of ... breaches of laws and international conventions, no matter the side that commits it," a spokesman for the group said. "On the other hand, there is no way to compare between people who throw tons of bombs on an unarmed population, killing children and women in order to eliminate the people's revolution, and those who use light or medium weapons to protect the people." 

An estimated 4.3 million Syrians have been displaced by the war, and 1.6 million have fled the country, the UN report said, adding that another 6.8 million have been trapped by fighting.

Vuk Jeremić, the Serbian president of the UN General Assembly, told the group last month that at least 80,000 people had died during the two-year war, most of them civilians.

NBC News' Albina Kovalyova and Catherine Chomiak, and Reuters,  contributed to this report.

Related:

• Both sides in Syria commit war crimes, UN says
• Hundreds of wounded civilians trapped, doctor says
• More NBC News coverage of Syria

 

UNITED NATIONS - Human rights groups on Monday sharply criticized the latest draft of what could become the first international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade, accusing the United States and others of pushing to dilute it. 

Several Western delegations, however, played down the complaints of groups like Oxfam, Amnesty International, the World Council of Churches and Control Arms, saying the latest draft showed progress, though improvements were clearly needed. 

United Nations member states began meeting last week in a final push to hammer out a binding international treaty to end the lack of regulation over conventional arms sales. On Friday, Peter Wolcott of Australia, president of the drafting conference, distributed a revised draft treaty.

One of changes was in the list of arms the treaty covers.

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The previous draft treaty said that the following weapon types would be covered by the pact "at a minimum" - tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers and small arms and light arms.

But in the new draft, the words "at a minimum" have been removed, which rights groups said has dramatically narrowed the scope of the weapons to be covered by the treaty.

Won't save lives
"This treaty is not good enough," said Anna Macdonald of Oxfam. "This is not the treaty that is going to save lives and protect people."

Jonathan Frerichs of the World Council of Churches told reporters predator drones and hand grenades are examples of deadly arms that should be explicitly covered but are not.

Arms control campaigners and human rights advocates say one person dies every minute worldwide as a result of armed violence, and that a treaty is needed to halt the uncontrolled flow of weapons and ammunition that they argue helps fuel wars, atrocities and rights abuses.

They say conflicts in Syria, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast and elsewhere highlight the need to keep arms from going to governments that use them for atrocities.

Several Western diplomats said that the rights groups were ignoring improvements and exaggerating shortcomings of the new draft, noting a new draft comes out on Wednesday ahead of the final day of negotiations on Thursday. 

If the pact does not get the required unanimous approval of member states, it would go to a vote in the 193-nation General Assembly, where diplomats say it is very likely to pass.

The point of an arms trade treaty is to set standards for all cross-border transfers of conventional weapons. It would also create binding requirements for states to review all cross-border arms contracts to ensure arms will not be used in human rights abuses, terrorism or violations of humanitarian law.

In addition to the narrowing of the scope of weapons covered, rights groups and supporters of a tough treaty said ammunition is not properly covered, and loopholes that exclude defense cooperation agreements, loans and leases remain in the draft.

U.S. influence?
Oxfam's Macdonald suggested it was the United States, the world's top arms producer, that had pushed for a narrowing of the scope of the weapons covered in the treaty. The U.S. mission did not have an immediate reaction, but several diplomats also blamed it on the United States and other major arms exporting nations.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry voiced conditional support for the treaty last week, saying Washington was "steadfast in its commitment to achieve a strong and effective Arms Trade Treaty that helps address the adverse effects of the international arms trade on global peace and stability."

But he did not promise U.S. support. He repeated that the United States would not accept a treaty that imposed new limits on U.S. citizens' right to bear arms, a sensitive political issue in the United States.

Over the weekend, the National Rifle Association, a powerful U.S. pro-gun lobby, welcomed a measure adopted by the U.S. Senate on Saturday that called on the United States not to join the U.N. arms trade treaty. The NRA has vowed to fight hard to prevent ratification of the treaty if it reaches Washington.

The measure, which was put forward by Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, passed on a 53-46 vote. Several U.N. diplomats in New York said this was a sign of the difficulties the United States would have securing Senate approval of a pact.

"Thanks to the efforts of Senator Inhofe, we are one step closer to ensuring the U.N. will not trample on the freedoms our Founding Fathers guaranteed to us," said Chris Cox, executive director of NRA's Institute for Legislative Action.

The American Bar Association, an attorneys' lobbying group, last month disputed the NRA position on the treaty, saying in a paper that "ratification of the treaty would not infringe upon rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment."

The main reason the arms trade talks are taking place at all is that the United States - the world's biggest arms trader - reversed U.S. policy on the issue after President Barack Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support an arms treaty.

Related: UN to investigate Syrian chemical weapon claim

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Prospects for a quick conclusion to a U.N. investigation of a possible chemical weapons attack in Syria will depend on cooperation from the warring parties and safety for investigators — problematic conditions in the chaos of the country's civil war, an expert on weapons control told NBC News on Thursday.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that he had agreed to conduct an investigation of allegations of an attack in the northern city of Aleppo. The government and the opposition have accused each other of carrying out that attack on Tuesday.

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Ralf Trapp, a German who works on disarmament and non-proliferation issues, specializing on chemical and biological weapons, said the first job of an inspection team would be safely getting to and operating at the site. He said then -- if the Syrian parties cooperated and the inspectors felt safe — they would:

 

• Interview victims and bystanders on what they felt, smelled, saw, etc.
• Search for remnants of any weapons used. That is often difficult and unproductive, but the earlier one gets to the scene, the better.
• Take samples at the site. Pieces of weapons are rarely found, Trapp said, but the chemical agent can be uncovered in soil, plants and, if in an urban environment, bricks and building materials. Beyond the agent, inspectors will look for chemicals left behind as the agents themselves deteriorate.
• Conduct medical tests on the victims, including taking tissue samples, blood samples and, if the teams arrive quickly enough, urine samples. Samples in some cases can be analyzed on the scene, but if the inspections are delayed, there are labs in Europe and the U.S. that can find evidence in DNA and proteins.

Trapp said a big question will be how soon the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – of which Trapp is a former official -- can get a team into Aleppo. He said the team would have to be large and varied, with security officers and medical officers as well as inspectors.

But each day lost will influence the speed with which the investigation can be concluded, he said, because as more time elapses before biological sampling occurs, more sophisticated DNA and other toxicological testing is required. 

With optimum cooperation and conditions on the ground, an investigation led by the OPCW could be under way in days, Trapp said. A determination, including the pinpointing of the agent, could be made within days after arrival, he said -- if there is good access to interviews and environmental and biological samples. He said his former organization has equipment at the ready and could move quickly.

But if the inspection is conducted by the kind of UN group that investigated the allegations against Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, with countries nominating experts and then gathering them, getting inspectors in could take weeks, he said. 

Considering that Aleppo is a war zone, optimum conditions are unlikely.

Trapp would not speculate on what agents were used, but he said that he has seen no reports of blistering, and without blistering, it is unlikely to have been mustard gas — although he said it’s possible that some victims might have only internal blistering.

Evidence of a nerve gas attack, for example, would be found in corpses. Victims would show certain telltale signs, like tiny pupils, saliva around the noses and eyes. There might be evidence of convulsions.

He did not dismiss the use of more common agents that are not on the proscribed list of chemical weapons. Victims said they smelled chlorine, and those felled in the attacks reported suffocating.  Chlorine, of course, is found throughout the industrial world and in large quantities can kill. Moreover, feelings of suffocation could be associated with a chlorine attack.

The chemical has a long history of use. It was the first chemical used as a weapon in World War I by German troops against French and French colonial forces. There are reports that insurgents in Iraq used chlorine in huge quantities in their attacks.

Similarly, tear gas, if used in large quantities in a confined space, can suffocate and kill.

Trapp was careful to note that even though chlorine or tear gas are not listed as prohibited weapons on the Chemical Weapons Convention, each could be considered a chemical weapon if used as a "method of warfare" rather than as being used for law enforcement or crowd control. The convention bars the use of chemicals in general as a "method of warfare." 

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UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday announced that the United Nations will launch an investigation as requested by the Syrian government into allegations that chemical weapons were used in Syria.

"I have decided to conduct a United Nations investigation into the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria," Ban told reporters.

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He said the investigation will focus on "the specific incident brought to my attention by the Syrian government."

Syria asked Ban on Wednesday to investigate an alleged chemical weapons attack by "terrorist groups" near the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday, Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said.

The Syrian opposition said on Wednesday that there was a second chemical weapons attack on Tuesday in Damascus in addition to the one the government and opposition accuse each other of carrying out in Aleppo on the same day.

But Ban made clear that the focus of the investigation he announced would be the Aleppo attack.

"I am of course aware that there are other allegations of similar cases involving the reported use of chemical weapons," he said, adding that the United Nations would be cooperating with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the World Health Organization.

"Full cooperation from all parties will be essential. I stress that this includes unfettered access," he said. "I reiterated this point in my communications with the Syrian authorities."

"There is much work to do and this will not happen overnight. It is obviously a difficult mission," Ban said. "I intend for this investigation to start as soon as is practically possible."

Related:

'Suffocating in the streets': Chemical weapons attack reported in Syria

US defense chief: Intel 'raises serious concerns' about Syria chemical weapons

Syria chaos looms large over Obama's Israel trip

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After a decade of disagreement, 130 nations decided on Friday to adopt a historic, albeit non-binding, United Nations declaration on the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. Language on gay rights, abortion and marital rape had reportedly been watered down to secure the agreement of Muslim and Catholic conservative states.

Mervat Tallawy, an Egyptian envoy and head of the National Council on Women, praised the accord. “International solidarity is needed for women’s empowerment and preventing this regressive mood, whether in the developing countries or developed, or in the Middle East in particular,” Tallawy told reporters after the successful vote. “It’s a global wave of conservatism, or repression against women, and this paper is a message that if we can get together, hold power together, we can be a strong wave against this conservatism.” 

Tellawy might have been tailoring her comments to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. The group exerts tremendous influence on Egypt’s government after the election of a former leader and current member, President Mohamed Morsi. The Brotherhood had issued a statement on its English Ikhwanweb website describing how the declaration “would lead to complete disintegration of society, and would certainly be the final step in the intellectual and cultural invasion of Muslim countries.”

The ten-point statement warned that the declaration would grant women equal rights to her husband, control over household finances, birth control, divorce, the ability to travel and would allow a woman to sue her husband in case of rape.

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The Muslim Brotherhood’s statement was not refuted by the presidency, which issued a clarification of its stance on the declaration on violence against women.  The Office of the Assistant to the President of Egypt on Foreign Relations affirmed official rejection of violence against women in all of its forms “for any reason under any name,” but within the context of Egypt’s commitment to upholding its new constitution. However, the constitution was agreed to only by Islamists and rejected by secularists and moderates who felt that it failed to protect or improve women’s rights and human rights.

The passage of the declaration, a victory for women in general, may not change life in the short term for Egypt’s females. At present, 83% of Egyptian women face sexual harassment, over 90% have undergone female genital mutilation and almost 35% suffer domestic violence. Tallawy said in a statement issued by the National Council of Women that Egypt approved the charter on the condition that it be implemented according to each country’s laws and traditions and is accredited under the category of “moral obligation” to be implemented according to each country's local affairs. Soraya Bahgat, anti- sexual harassment activist, said there is still a lot of work to be done. 

"The fact that Egypt is one of the few countries that had opposed [the declaration] sheds light on where we stand on women's rights. Its not a surprise because our current practices do not espouse things in the declaration," Bahgat said. "For example, a Muslim woman is not allowed to marry a Christian man. There idea that a woman is a man's property is deeply rooted in Egytian society …. I am not sure how [the passage of the declaration] will change things today. These are things that need to be tackled in the long term. We need to focus on what obstacles we have inside the country."

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