"The draft resolution has not been adopted, having failed to obtain the required number of votes," said UN Security Council President Gustavo Meza-Cuadra.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is considered the world's leading watchdog agency on the use of such weapons.
Russia, China, Bolivia, Kazakhstan and Ethiopia voted in favor of the resolution, while France, the United States, Britain and Poland voted against it. Other members of the 15-member council abstained from voting.
Earlier in the day, two resolutions to reconstruct the UNSC's mechanism for investigating alleged deployment of chemical weapons failed. The US drafted one of the resolutions, while Russia drafted the other.
To clarify, the OPCW is already on its way to the relevant area of Syria, as supported by the UK and Russia on Monday. The Russian envoy offered for Syrian and Russian forces to escort the investigators to the site.
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) April 10, 2018
Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, said it was a "frustrating day" for diplomats at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzya urged the US to to hold its fire regarding the matter. "The threats you are proffering… vis-a-vis Syria should make us seriously worried, all of us, because we could find ourselves on the threshold of some very sad and serious events," he told Haley.
"I would once again ask you, once again beseech you, to refrain from the plans that you're currently developing for Syria," he said after the vote.
