Updated April 12, 2017 09:01:05

Weapons inspectors in Syria are right now on the cutting edge of investigations that could determine future sanctions against Syria, spark a war, or help shape the peace.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed there's a conspiracy to stage a chemical weapons attack in Damascus, his call for an investigation into last week's chemical horrors may be a game-changer.

Since news of the attacks first broke, the weapons inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), already at work in Syria, have been gathering information "from all available sources" and getting ready to deploy if they get the chance.

And, behind the scenes they've been conducting other, potentially dramatic investigations in Syria (see below).

Mr Putin's call for an OPCW investigation may also be a smokescreen because when the US, UK and France drafted a UN Security Council Resolution last week calling for just such an investigation, it got bogged down amid Russian demands to know exactly who would be on the investigative team, and objections to the mention of serious consequences for the use of chemical weapons.

But the three Western powers are going to revive that effort this week.

Russia's special relationship with Syria

Mr Putin has form when it comes to protecting the Syrian Government from the consequences of chemical attacks.

After the horrific Sarin gas attacks in Ghoutta in 2013, Mr Putin agreed to a Security Council resolution threatening anyone responsible for future attacks with serious consequences under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter (sanctions, even war).

The missile attack came after years of heated debate and deliberation in Washington over intervention in Syria's bloody civil war.

Then, amid increasing use of chlorine as a chemical weapon, Mr Putin agreed to a UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) to look into further attacks.

And this is the key: back in 2013, the investigators weren't tasked with saying who was responsible.

But the JIM is specifically tasked with pointing the finger.

It's a powerful process and crucially, offers the hope of accountability under international law, instead of unilateral missile strikes.

But since then, the JIM has blamed the Syrian Government for three chlorine attacks and Mr Putin has blocked any follow-on punishment under Chapter 7.

Bomb by bomb, one of the world's most important weapons conventions is being undermined.

UN resolution may disappoint

So, if a UN Security Council resolution gets up this week, check the fine print for consequences — and get ready for a damp squib — or a potentially game-changing new phase in this explosive struggle.

And what about that other investigation going on behind the scenes?

For years we have been aware of evidence that Bashar al-Assad may not have declared all of his chemical weapons stockpiles — and these strikes highlight the dilemma about what to do now, writes Matt Brown.

If you believe 'America took away all of Syria's chemical weapons after 2013', then you've swallowed a half-truth.

The OPCW destroyed the declared stockpile, but it also sent in a Declaration Assessment Team, which found worrying signs President Bashar al-Assad hadn't told the whole story.

Traces of chemicals used to make weapons were found where they shouldn't be.

The declared number of munitions made to carry them didn't match the declared chemical stores.

The US, UK and sometimes Australia, have raised this at regular meetings of the OPCW.

In a technical and diplomatic tussle that has lasted more than four years, the inspectors had, decidedly, not given Mr Assad a clean bill of health.

And then came the carnage last week at Khan Sheikhoun.

As the world grappled with those horrors, the Security Council heard a little-noticed update on what the weapons inspectors have been doing in Syria to answer their many unanswered questions about the true scale of the chemical weapons program and the stockpile it produced.

The High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Kim Won-Soo, told them the chemical weapons investigators had, for the first time, been able to take samples from the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre — a controversial element of Syria's chemical infrastructure — in late February and early March.

Years have passed, but the results of tests on whatever was still there are expected in the coming weeks, and other questions remain unanswered.

You can expect those to remain a point of contention and, potentially, a cause for conflict.

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, world-politics, crime, syrian-arab-republic, united-states, russian-federation

First posted April 12, 2017 08:09:47