The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will present Monday the UN report on chemical weapons in Syria.

The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will present Monday the UN report on chemical weapons in Syria.

Ban has already revealed that he expects the report by a UN investigation team to give "overwhelming" confirmation that arms were used in an attack near Damascus on August 21 in which hundreds died.
 
But the UN team is not allowed to say who carried out the attack, while diplomats say the detail will give a clear pointer to who is responsible.
 
A Russia-US accord on the dismantling of Syria's chemical stockpile will also weigh heavily on Security Council consultations expected to be called Monday.

The head of the UN team, Swedish expert Ake Sellstrom, arrived in New York on Sunday and met Ban, officials said.
 
 
The UN report promises to be very technical, with details of the missile used and possibly the trajectory of the missile, according to diplomats. It was not certain however whether Sellstrom's report would give full details of the chemical used.
 
"They have collected a considerable amount of evidence -- evidence through samples, evidence through witness interviews -- and they can construct through that a fact-based narrative that can get at the key facts of what happened on August 21," a UN spokesman said on August 29 before the team left through Damascus.
 
The samples of blood, hair, urine, soil and other elements have been analyzed at laboratories in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland, according to officials.
 
Alongside the report, Ban will make his own presentation, which could also influence the next stages of the diplomatic debate.
 
"The commission had access to a very large amount of evidence," said a UN Security Council diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Any reader of the report will be able to guess who carried it out."
 
The UN experts went to Damascus on August 18 to investigate claims that chemical weapons were used near Aleppo on March 19 and at two other sites, which have been kept secret.
 
They were in Damascus when the attack on opposition-held Ghota in the suburbs was staged on August 21. The team was immediately put onto the Ghota attack and will return later to investigate the other sites.