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© George Ourfalian/Reuters Syrian officials visit a victim of chemical weapons at a hospital in Aleppo, on March 21, 2013. Britain and France say that there is credble evidence Syria used chemical weapons in December. Syria says it is the anti-government fighters who have used chemical weapons.
Britain and France have informed the United Nations that there is credible evidence that Syria used chemical weapons on more than one occasion since December, according to senior diplomats and officials briefed on the accounts.

In letters to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the two European powers said soil samples, witness interviews and opposition sources support charges that nerve agents were used in and around the cities of Aleppo, Homs and possibly Damascus, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The European accounts are in part aimed at countering accusations by the Syrian government that opposition forces had fired chemical weapons during fighting in the town of Khan al-Asal near Aleppo on March 19, killing 26 people, including Syrian troops.

European diplomats acknowledge that Syrian forces may have been exposed to chemical agents during the attack, but they say it was a "friendly fire" incident in which the troops were hit when a government shell missed its opposition target.

The Syrian government has seized on the incident to make its case that opposition forces have introduced chemical weapons into the civil war.

A day after the alleged attack, Syria's U.N. ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, invited the world body to send an "impartial" technical team to the country confirm the opposition's use of chemical weapons. Russia strongly endorsed the Syrian request.

The U.N. chief agreed to establish a fact-finding team, but the effort has since been bogged down over a dispute about the scope of the investigation, with Russia backing the Syrian request for a limited probe into the Aleppo incident, and key Western powers, including Britain, France and the United States, proposing a broader investigation that examines the possible use of chemical weapons throughout Syria.

U.N. inspectors have not yet been permitted into the country.

President Obama has warned that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a "game changer" for the United States. After the Aleppo incident, Obama said that the United States would "investigate thoroughly exactly what happened" and that he had "instructed my teams to work closely with all other countries in the region and international organizations and institutions to find out precisely whether this red line was crossed."

But diplomats say the United States has responded more cautiously. The United States, said one Security Council diplomat, has been "less activist on this" than Britain and France.

James R. Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, told a Senate panel Thursday that accusations that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons are still being evaluated.

"The increasingly beleaguered [Syrian] regime, having found that its escalation of violence through conventional means is not working, appears quite willing to use chemical weapons against its own people," he said. "We receive many claims of chemical warfare use in Syria each day, and we take them all seriously, and we do all we can to investigate them."

As the fighting has reached a stalemate, the humanitarian situation in Syria is "approaching a point of no return," Valerie Amos, the top U.N. refu­gee official, told the Security Council on Thursday. According to U.N. figures, more than 70,000 Syrians have been killed and nearly a quarter of the country's 20 million people have fled their homes or taken refuge in neighboring countries since the conflict began in 2011.

Syrian opposition political leaders and their international backers will meet this weekend in Istanbul for an attempt to pull together on all levels.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who is scheduled to attend the meeting, said Thursday that the hope is to get "everybody on the same page with respect to what post-Assad might look like - commitment to diversity, pluralism, democracy, inclusivity, protection of minority rights - [and] that they would be open to the negotiating process to a political settlement."

The outside supporters say they want a post-Assad government that is nonsectarian and inclusive. But the Obama administration is less certain than its European allies that lethal aid is the answer, preferring to continue pushing for a political agreement.

"We continue to weigh the risk that any weapons we might contribute that would make a real difference could wind up in the hands of extremists - and come back to hurt us and our partners in the region," said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. "Other countries are making their own decisions."

Britain and France are pushing the European Union to let an arms embargo on Syria expire at the end of May. Although Britain has not made a final decision to supply weapons, "we want to send a message to the [Assad] regime that bad things are certain to come," said Alistair Burt, a senior British Foreign Office official who met with Obama administration officials in Washington this week.

In the region, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates believe that Qatar and, to a lesser extent, Turkey have failed to draw a sharp enough line between their aid to "moderate" opposition fighting groups and extremist rebel organizations such as ­Jabhat al-Nusra.

"They want to take Bashar out at any cost and deal with the day after, the day after," said one senior Arab official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal disputes in the region.

One of the chief beneficiaries of these divisions may be Assad, who has retained the loyalty of minority Syrians, including members of his Alawite sect and Christians, by warning that the majority Sunnis will take revenge against them and turn the country over to al-Qaeda.

"We have no choice but victory," Assad said in a Syrian television interview Wednesday. "If we don't win, Syria will be finished, and I don't think this is a choice for any citizen in Syria."

As international and Syrian opposition players prepare to meet in Istanbul, internal debate continues in Washington. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers this week that he found the situation on the ground in Syria more confusing than ever and has had second thoughts about his recommendation last year that Obama increase assistance to opposition fighters.

Kerry is likely to announce additional U.S. humanitarian assistance this weekend, senior U.S. and European officials said, and the administration may move forward with what one European official called "edgier" nonlethal support in the form of body armor and night-vision goggles.