(APP): United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked UN Security Council members to find a way to unite and punish anyone found to have used chemical weapons in Syria, in line with international law.

“We cannot go on living with impunity in relation to what has been happening with weapons that should have disappeared from the face of the world,” he said while speaking to reporters on Saturday in Sweden, where he is hosting a retreat for Council members in the home which belonged to his predecessor in the 1950s, Dag Hammarskjold; an inspirational leader of the world body, who was tragically killed in a plane crash in 1961.

In response to a question on whether the 15-member Council had a roadmap for a solution to end the conflict now in its seventh year, the Secretary-General said that ‘everything’ needed to be put on track, and there was “still a long way to go” to achieve unity.

The UN chief added that the closed-doors session in Sweden provided an opportunity for the Council to prove that it “can be effective when it is united.”

“The problem is that in many aspects, we have not yet been able to have a united Security Council,” he added.

Quoting former Secretary-General Hammarskjold, Guterres said that “more than ever, the world is one world” and mankind does not have “the right” to allow new and old divides to cause so much suffering and pain.

“To do the right thing is to overcome contradictions, to overcome differences and to understand that we all really must work for what is really one world,” he told reporters.