FRENCH Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian claimed on Tuesday to have “unverified evidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in Idlib province as tensions continue to escalate.

“We have a sign of the use of chemical weapons in the Idlib area but for now there isn’t verification,” he told the country’s foreign affairs committee.

“We are cautious because we think that the use of chemical weapons must be confirmed and lethal before we react,” he said.

It is seen as the latest Western imperial attempt to justify intervention in Syria and remove President Bashar al-Assad from power.

French President Emmanuel Macron has maintained that any use of chemical weapons by Syria is a “red line” which would provoke a military response. This stance is shared by the US.

They were joined by Britain in last year’s missile strikes, prior to investigations taking place, following allegations of chemical attacks by the Syrian government in Douma last April.

Subsequent reports have cast serious doubts on where responsibility for the chemical attacks lies. Rumours that circulated soon afterwards suggested that they were staged by the pseudo-humanitarian White Helmets group.

Veteran journalist Robert Fisk’s report from the ground appeared to contradict the claims made by France, Britain and the US which all professed to have concrete evidence of a chemical attack conducted by Mr Assad’s forces.

Further doubt has been cast following the recent leak of a dissenting engineers’ report which was erroneously omitted from the official Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) report on Douma.

The document, signed off by veteran OPCW investigator Ian Henderson, concluded that there was “a higher probability” that two gas cylinders found at two different locations “were placed there manually” rather than being dropped by a Syrian army helicopter as was claimed.

After reviewing the evidence the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, a group of independent scholars and researchers, concluded “beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2018 was staged.”

The OPCW tacitly confirmed the report was genuine after questioning from Mail on Sunday journalist Peter Hitchens, but did not explain why it failed to disclose the findings in its final report to the United Nations.

Instead it confirmed it was “conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised release of the document in question.”

Syrian forces continue to make advances as they try to retake the last remaining jihadist stronghold of Idlib.