UN chief says Security Council Sweden retreat "cooled down" Syria crisis

UNITED NATIONS, April 23 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday described the Security Council retreat in southern Sweden this past weekend a success because "things have cooled down" for the Syrian crisis.

The 15 top ambassadors representing member countries of the panel met at the restored farm of former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold at Backakra, close to Ystad in southern Sweden.

The highly respected second UN chief died at the age of 47 in a plane crash in Africa while on a Congo peace mission.

Lauding Sweden for bringing the council members to the retreat, Guterres said in a Stockholm news conference, "I believe this initiative of bringing for the first time out of New York the Security Council for a retreat, is perfectly in line with this bridge-building strategy of the Swedish presence in the Security Council."

Sweden is one of the 10 elected members of the council.

"I am extremely grateful for this initiative, and in the case of Syria, to fully support a political solution -- there is no military solution -- and the political solution needs the success of the Geneva intra-Syrian talks that as you know are facilitated by the United Nations," he told reporters.

A transcript of the news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven was released at the UN headquarters in New York.

But, Guterres said, there were still obstacles to be faced in the Syrian crisis.

"We need humanitarian access to the whole of the Syrian territory, to everybody in need, and we also need to find a way to attribute responsibilities for those that are violating international law with chemical weapons attacks that are absolutely unacceptable."

An Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspection team recently visited the site of the April 7 alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, near Damascus, and has sent samples taken for evaluation.

The alleged attack touched off heated debate during a series of emergency sessions in the Security Council with heated rhetoric, and an April 14 bombardment of suspected chemical weapon development sites in Syria by a U.S.-led coalition. Enditem