The US has accused Russia of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground.
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Moscow denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory US-led missile strikes on Syria on Saturday.
Syria and Russia deny unleashing poison gas on April 7 during their offensive on Douma, which ended with the recapture of the town that had been the last rebel stronghold near the capital, Damascus.
Relief organisations say dozens of men, women and children were killed. Footage of young victims foaming at the mouth and weeping in agony has thrust Syria's civil war - in which half a million people have been killed in the past seven years - to the forefront of world concern again.
Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) travelled to Syria last week to inspect the site, but have yet to gain access to Douma, which is now under government control after the rebels withdrew.
"It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site," US Ambassador Kenneth Ward said at an OPCW meeting in The Hague on Monday.
"It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission to conduct an effective investigation," he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied Moscow had interfered with any evidence, telling the BBC: "I can guarantee that Russia has not tampered with the site."
The UN Security Council is due to be briefed on Tuesday, at the request of Russia, on the situation in Syria's northern city of Raqqa, where Islamic State was defeated last year by US-backed forces, and the Rubkan camp for displaced Syrians near the country's border with Jordan and Iraq.
Britain's delegation to the OPCW accused Russia and the Assad government of stopping inspectors from reaching Douma.
British Ambassador Peter Wilson said in The Hague that the United Nations had cleared the inspectors to go but they had been unable to reach Douma because Syria and Russia had been unable to guarantee their safety.
Moscow blamed the delay on the air strikes, in which the US, France and Britain targeted what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities.
A Russian defence ministry official said later the OPCW experts would travel to Douma on Wednesday.
OPCW inspectors have been attacked on two previous missions to the sites of chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
The US-led strikes did nothing to alter the strategic balance or dent Assad's supremacy, and the Western allies have said the aim was to prevent the further use of chemical weapons, not to intervene in the civil war or topple Assad.
Australian Associated Press
