European Union foreign ministers displayed their divisions Friday over whether to start shipping weapons to rebels in Syria, with Britain and France isolated in their efforts to boost the opposition's firepower.
Of special importance to the ministers meeting in Dublin Castle was the question whether Syria has used chemical weapons recently as some reports suggest.
"Chemical weapons pose a huge danger. Bashar al-Assad has a lot of them and there are indications that he could have used them and could use them. And it is something the whole international community considers unacceptable, including the Russians. I really insisted on that," said Laurent Fabius, France Minister of Foreign Affairs.
British Foreign Minister William Hague agreed that a United Nations investigation into the matter was crucial.
Syria has one of the world's largest arsenals of chemical weapons and Washington has been on high alert since last year for any
possible use or transfer of chemical weapons by President Assad's forces.
It fears that an increasingly desperate regime might turn to the stockpiles in a bid to defeat the rebellion.
The relatively lightly armed anti-Assad forces say they most desperately need ground-to-air weapons to deter Syrian government air strikes and helicopter gunships, as well as increased access to anti-tank weaponry.
Iran is considered Syria's primary arms supplier.
In Geneva on Friday dozens of nations agreed to extend a UN probe of human rights abuses in Syria's civil war for another year, signalling their grave concern about the escalating violence - and their intent to prosecute abuses.
By a vote of 41-1, the UN's top human rights body, based in Geneva, re-authorised its panel of four independent experts to continue their investigation of suspected war crimes and other abuses until March 14, a half year longer than had been originally proposed.
Only Venezuela was opposed.
Abstaining were Ecuador, India, Kazakhstan, Philippines and Uganda.
But the overwhelming agreement among supporters in the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council - among them the US, Germany, Libya, Pakistan, Qatar and United Arab Emirates - showed strong support for the work of the expert panel, which began its investigation in August 2011.
It was a move flatly rejected by Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, Syrian Ambassador to Geneva.
"It is an aberration, it is an abuse of the council's authority, it is an exploitation of the blood of the victims. I should recall that some parties that contributed to drafting this draft resolution, have blood on their hands, the blood of the Syrian people. This is a political, ethical and moral cover for terrorism," he said.
Earlier this month, the panel led by Brazilian diplomat and scholar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro told reporters in Geneva that it is collecting evidence on 20 massacres in Syria, a reflection of the civil war's growing brutality.
The United Nations estimates more than 70-thousand people have been killed in the conflict, which started two years ago as a popular uprising against Assad's regime.
