Experts’ Report to U.N. on Syrian Mass Killing Is Expected Within a Few Days

The secretary general of the United Nations could receive a widely awaited report on Monday, or possibly earlier, on last month’s mass killing in Syria that is believed to have involved chemical weapons, diplomats said Thursday. Some said they expected the findings would point unambiguously to Syrian government culpability. The shift, which was confirmed by several administration officials and will be announced on Friday, does not portend change in the president’s economic agenda. But with Mr. Sperling’s exit on Jan. 1 after nearly three years in the White House and two at the Treasury Department, Mr. Obama will lose an adviser who has been known as a perpetual motion machine for progressive domestic policy ideas since the Clinton administration. But diplomats and arms control experts who are knowledgeable about both the type and volume of evidence the inspectors amassed in Syria said they believed the report would be a meticulously detailed account that would lead readers to draw the conclusion that only the Syrian military forces could have carried out such an attack, which asphyxiated hundreds of civilians.