(CNN) -- Syria's president says he'll welcome the return of U.N. investigators to follow up on more allegations of chemical weapons use in his country. 
 
 "We've been asking them to come back to Syria to continue their investigations," President Bashar al-Assad told Fox News in an interview broadcast Wednesday. 
 
 Al-Assad said he hadn't had time yet to analyze the U.N. investigators' findings so far, but stressed they have more work to do. 
 
 "They haven't finished it yet," he said, adding that it's clear that rebels were behind chemical weapons attacks, not his government. 
 
 Ake Sellstrom, the head of the inspection team that visited after an August 21 attack outside Damascus, told CNN that the next visit could take place as early as next week. 
 
 In the meantime, Al-Assad vowed that his government would comply with the deal to hand over and destroy its chemical weapons, but noted that the timeframe is uncertain and the costs will be great -- up to $1 billion by some estimates. 
 
 And he said that his government's decision to sign on had nothing to do with a threat of military action by the United States. 
 
 "Syria never obeyed any threat. We actually responded to the Russian initiative," he told Fox. "We obey because we want to obey. We have completely different incentives." 
 
 Russia denounces U.N. report 
 
 Soon after Western countries said the U.N. findings implicated the Syrian regime in using sarin gas, Russia fired back, calling the report "distorted." 
 
 Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov also told Russia Today that the report was built on insufficient information. He said Russia has its own evidence from the site of the August 21 attack that, according to U.S. estimates, killed more than 1,400 people. 
 
 "This analysis is not finished, so the point here is not about accusing parties," Ryabkov told Russia Today. "But the point is ... that those inspectors of the U.N. should come back to Syria to complete their investigation." 
 
 In the same interview, he said Syria has given Russia evidence that implicates rebels in the August 21 attack, which occurred outside Damascus. 
 
 "This confirmation and this evidence has been transmitted to the Russian side ... and we are in the process of studying those," he said without citing what the evidence was. 
 
 Russia will present evidence to the Security Council, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Valdai, Russia, on Wednesday. He did not say when the presentation would take place and added that he himself had not seen it. 
 
 Russia has been a strong ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, and Russian defense contracts with Syria have probably exceeded $4 billion. 
 
 Is the U.S. back to square one on Syria? 
 
 The United Nations official in charge of weapons inspectors said that the report alleging chemical weapons use in Syria "stands for itself," shooting back Russian allegations that the report was "biased" and "distorted." 
 
 "It is a very sound, scientific report," Angela Kane, the U.N. high representative for disarmament affairs, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday. 
 
 Moscow's reaction to the U.N. report has differed sharply from those of the United States and France. 
 
 "Based on our preliminary review of information contained in the report, several crucial details confirm the Assad regime's guilt in carrying out this attack," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday. 
 
 She said one of the munitions identified in the report, a 120 mm improvised rocket, has been linked to previous attacks by al-Assad's regime, and "we have no indications that the opposition has manufactured or used this style rocket." 
 
 French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said his country also believes the report proves the Syrian regime used chemical warfare in opposition strongholds near Damascus. 
 
 But Nick Brown, editor in chief of IHS Jane's Defence Equipment and Technology Centre, said that though the U.N. report appears to prove that high-quality, weaponized sarin was used in significant quantities in Syria, "I have not personally seen any compelling data that proves beyond doubt who the weapons were used by." 
 
 He added: "There is a degree of circumstantial evidence that appears to point to the attack originating with the Assad forces, but the exact forensic detail of who prepared and then triggered the weapons remains unclear and was beyond the scope of the U.N. investigation." 
 
 Securing Syria's chemical weapons: Mission impossible? 
 
 Syrian government claims a win 
 
 United Nations Security Council members met Wednesday to try to hammer out a resolution to get Syria to give up its chemical weapons. It wasn't clear Wednesday night how much progress they'd made. 
 
 Reaching a deal will be tough. U.S. and French officials want to include the threat of military action in the event Syria doesn't comply, but Russian officials don't want any wording that could countenance the use of force. 
 
 The disagreement came days after Russia and the United States reached a rare agreement on Syria -- a plan for eliminating the country's chemical weapons stockpile. Even Syria agreed to the plan, and U.S. President Barack Obama has held back on possible military action while diplomatic options play out. 
 
 But even before seeing a Security Council resolution, the Syrian regime claimed an international win. 
 
 Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi told the Syrian Cabinet about "brilliant victories of the Syrian diplomacy realized ... in terms of preventing the U.S. from launching a military aggression against Syria," the Syrian Arab News Agency reported Wednesday. 
 
 But the diplomacy hasn't stopped bloodshed. The opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria reported Wednesday that regime forces killed 24 people in the village of Kafr Zeiba in Idlib province. 
 
 The Syrian opposition has blamed al-Assad's government for the violence and called for his ouster. 
 
 Al-Assad told Fox News that his government can't back down on what he called a fight against terrorism, arguing that 80%-90% of rebels have ties to al Qaeda or other extremist groups. Civilian casualties in the Syrian conflict, he argued, have come from rebel attacks and from his government's attempts to root out terrorists from residential areas. 
 
 "The army has to go there and get rid of terrorists. The army should defend citizens. You cannot leave them free, killing people, beheading people, eating their hearts," he said. "In every way, you have casualties. This is war. (There is) no clean war, no soft war, no good war." 
 
 Syria's children deserve chance to be kids again 
 
 CNN's Jill Dougherty, reporting from Valdai, Russia, and Yousuf Basil, Jo Shelley, Samira Said, Mick Krever, Nick Paton Walsh, Joe Vaccarello and Alla Eshchenko contributed to this report. ||||| Looming over a tense capital and outlying neighborhoods bristling with anger and fear, Mount Qasioun is Damascus’s most prominent military position. It is also a complex inseparably linked to the Assad family’s rule, a network of compounds and positions occupied by elite units led by members of the president’s inner circle and clan. 
 
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 The units based on the mountain are “as close to the Assad regime as it’s going to get,” said Emile Hokayem, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Mr. Hokayem added that theories that the chemicals had been launched by a rebel mole seeking to discredit the government were unlikely because of the solidity and tight control of those units. 
 
 Mr. Assad’s government and its ally Russia have continued to claim publicly that Syrian rebels were responsible for the attacks, which killed hundreds of people, many of them children, in the most lethal chemical warfare attack in decades. But the United Nations data, if accurate, would undercut that claim and appear to erase some of the remaining ambiguity. 
 
 Rebel forces have never penetrated the major military installations of Mount Qasioun. In tactical and technical terms, they would almost certainly have been unable to organize and fire sustained and complex barrages of rockets from that location undetected. 
 
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 The United Nations’ evidence was gathered through standard measurements and investigative techniques at the places where sarin-filled rockets struck on Aug. 21. 
 
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 At one impact site, investigators found both the place where the rocket had passed through a “vegetal screen” above a wall just before it hit the ground, and the small impact crater itself. 
 
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 They noted that “the line linking the crater and the piercing of the vegetal screen can be conclusively established and has a bearing of 35 degrees.” 
 
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 At another impact area in another section of Damascus, a 330-millimeter rocket landed on what investigators described as “earthy, relatively soft ground, where the shaft/engine of the projectile remained dug in, undisturbed until investigated.” 
 
 The rocket’s shaft, the investigators noted, “pointed precisely in a bearing of 285 degrees.” 
 
 There the investigators’ public comments about their observations at impact sites essentially stopped, except for a parting explanation that shows how to reach a conclusion that the United Nations itself, in accordance with its mandate, did not say. 
 
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 These azimuths, or compass bearings, they noted, can be reversed to show the direction from which the rockets had been fired. They point back toward the geographic source of the attack, which investigators on the ground presumably would have been able, with their own eyes, to see high above them in the city. 
 
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 When taken together, the azimuths drawn from different neighborhoods lead back to and intersect at Mount Qasioun — so far an impregnable seat of Mr. Assad’s power — according to independent and separate calculations by both The New York Times and Human Rights Watch. 
 
 “Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible,” Josh Lyons, a satellite imagery analyst for Human Rights Watch, noted in a statement on Tuesday. 
 
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 “This isn’t conclusive,” Mr. Lyons added. “But it is highly suggestive.” 
 
 The map that Mr. Lyons and Human Rights Watch prepared, and a similar map made by The Times with no consultation or exchange of information, suggested that gas-filled rockets, which sailed over central Damascus and landed in civilian neighborhoods, originated “from the direction of the Republican Guard 104th Brigade,” which occupies a large base on the mountain’s western side. 
 
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 Depending on the degree of accuracy in the measurements, the flight path for at least one of the rockets could also be read to lead back to the government’s sprawling air base at Mezzeh, near the foot of Mount Qasioun. 
 
 A senior American intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the United States, via satellite, had confirmed rocket launches that corroborated the United Nations data and the Human Rights Watch analysis for one of the strikes. 
 
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 American analysts said that the data for the other strike was less clear, but that the United States had stronger data indicating that another Syrian military installation — an air base — was also involved in the sarin attacks on Aug. 21. 
 
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 Republican Guard units are responsible for maintaining control of the city and securing the presidential palace. 
 
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 “When you fire it from such a place, it means that you don’t care if fingers will be pointed to you in some period of time,” General Hanna said. 
 
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 Brownish by day, Mount Qasioun sparkles at night with the lights of neighborhoods climbing its slopes and, higher up, cafes where in normal times Damascus residents go in the evening to enjoy the view. In the midst of a civil war, Mount Qasioun is now largely off limits because it has become a government-controlled military zone. 
 
 On one shoulder of the mountain stands the presidential palace. On another, antennas sprout. 
 
 The government’s presence on the high ground includes elements of two brigades of the Republican Guard, a Special Forces headquarters and many artillery or rocket positions from which Syria’s military routinely fires barrages, rebels and city residents say. 
 
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 Over the past year, shelling from Mount Qasioun has become the capital’s familiar soundtrack. At night, Syrian humanitarian workers say, they can see the streak of projectiles flying from the ridge over the city toward rebel-held neighborhoods and suburbs. 
 
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 In recent weeks, one group of government supporters protesting the anticipated American strikes gathered on Mount Qasioun, vowing that the attack would happen “over our dead bodies.” But they eventually had to move because the military was firing another barrage from the area, residents said. 
 
 General Hanna and other military analysts said the reason for basing the Republican Guard in the area where the rockets appear to have originated is to prevent a military challenge to the government. The force is officially commanded by Mr. Assad’s brother, Maher, gravely wounded in a bombing last year. 
 
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 The entire mountain has remained the most securely held government area on the outskirts of Damascus. If rebels ever managed to take the area, analysts said, it could spell the fall of the government, but they have yet to threaten it seriously. 
 
 Speaking on Tuesday in New York, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, took pains not to express publicly any conclusions about culpability that could be drawn from the report, noting that assigning blame was explicitly beyond the United Nations’ mandate. The investigators’ mission, Mr. Ban noted, “is to find out facts and whether or not chemical weapons were used; if used, to what extent.” 
 
 “It is,” he added, “for others to decide whether to pursue this matter further to determine responsibility and accountability.” 
 
 Pressed later about whether he thought those responsible should be referred to the International Criminal Court, Mr. Ban was unequivocal. “The international community is firm and I am firm that any perpetrators who have used these chemical weapons under any circumstances under any pretext must be brought to justice,” he said.
– Just when it seemed like the US and Russia were suspiciously close to seeing eye-to-eye on Syria, things move back to more familiar territory. A Russian government minister has slammed the UN report findings that chemical weapons were used in Syria as "biased and one-sided," while claiming it has "material evidence" that Syrian rebels used chemical weapons, the BBC reports. Russia's not-at-all biased or one-sided source on this? Damascus. The UN report actually didn't accuse either party of using the weapons, though western governments have said it as good as points the finger. "When you look at the details of the evidence they present—it is inconceivable that anybody other than the regime used it," President Obama said yesterday, per Al Jazeera. Experts also tell the New York Times that the details in the report point right back to a powerful Syrian government military base. But Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov says the country wants to examine other alleged incidents of chemical weapons use prior to the August 21 attacks. And so does the UN, it would seem: it will be sending inspectors back for more investigations as early as next week, reports CNN.