Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier issued the following statement today (25 August) on the United Nations report on the use of poison gas in Syria:

“The report by the commission deployed by the UN Security Council now confirms what we have long feared, namely that the Syrian regime has verifiably used chlorine gas against its own people in the past few years. The terrorist militia IS has also used mustard gas.

We condemn the unscrupulous and ruthless use of chemical weapons – which are banned under international law – against the Syrian population, no matter from which side, in the strongest possible terms.

The use of chemical weapons, particularly against the civilian population, and the deliberate breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention must not remain without consequences.

The UN Security Council must now draw the right conclusions and take the necessary steps. I trust that this will happen and hope that, in view of the indisputable facts on the table, the Security Council will now display the necessary unity and determination to put an end to these terrible excesses.

The people in Syria have suffered for over five years as a result of the continuous spread of the civil war and the barbaric violence that is quite obviously prepared to stop at nothing. There are evidently still too many people in Syria and the international community who believe that the military card is the right way forward. However, we must not, especially now, slacken our efforts to get humanitarian supplies to the people in the face of such great resistance and to drive forward the Vienna process to achieve a political transition.”