Syrian President Bashar Assad said a United Nations report finding "clear and convincing evidence" that sarin nerve gas was used in Syria painted an "unrealistic" account, and he denied his government orchestrated the attack.
In an interview with Fox News Channel conducted in the Syrian capital of Damascus and aired Wednesday, Assad said terrorists were to blame for the chemical attack, which the US says killed more than 1,400 people, including hundreds of children. He said evidence that terrorist groups have used sarin gas has been turned over to Russia and that Russia, through one of its satellites, has evidence that the rockets in the Aug. 21 attack were launched from another area.
While the UN report did not lay blame, many experts interpreting the report said all indications were that the attack was conducted by Assad forces. US, Britain and France jumped on evidence in the report especially the type of rockets, the composition of the sarin agent, and trajectory of the missiles to declare that Assad's government was responsible.
The interview was conducted Tuesday by former Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Fox News contributor, and Fox News Channel Senior Correspondent Greg Palkot.
Assad said his government would abide by an agreement reached with U.S. and Russian officials to give up his chemical weapons. He says he has received estimates that destroying the stockpiles would cost $1 billion and would take roughly a year.
He said Syria was ready to talk to experts about the technical aspects of what he said would be a complicated task. He said Syria was ready to provide a list of weapons and provide experts access to the sites.
While he said the Aug. 21 attack was "despicable" and "a crime," he argued that no one had verified the credibility of videos or pictures of the victims. He contended that opposition forces, which have been joined by extremist jihadists, could have gained access to sarin.
Assad said the balance of opposition forces has shifted during the more than two-year conflict, and he alleged that 80 to 90 percent were members of al-Qaeda or its affiliates.
"At the very beginning, the jihadists were the minority. At the end of 2012 and during this year, they became the majority with the flow of tens of thousands from additional countries," he said adding that they were being financed by individuals who shared their extremist ideologies.
Assad said he had never talked with President Barack Obama. Asked if he wanted to, Assad said it would depend on the content of the conversation.
He said his message to Obama would be to "follow the common sense" of the American people.
Americans have been lukewarm about supporting any military strike on Syria for fear that the US would be embroiled in war.
Reactions:
It is crucial to keep the
military option on the table in dealing with the Syria crisis, NATO
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday.
"I think it is essential for keeping
momentum in the diplomatic and political process that the military option is
still on the table," Rasmussen said at an event organized by the Carnegie
Europe think-tank.
Russian President Vladimir Putin
said on Thursday he could not be 100 percent certain that a plan for the
destruction of Syrian chemical weapons would be carried out successfully but he
saw positive signs for hope.
Putin also said he had strong grounds to
believe that an Aug. 21 chemical attack in Syria was staged by opponents of
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In turn, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia has no current plans to destroy Syrian chemical weapons on its own territory under a Russia-US deal to eliminate President Bashar al-Assad's stockpiles, .
Asked whether Russia had plans to destroy Syria's chemical weapons stock on its own soil, Shoigu told the Interfax news agency, "No. A decision needs to be taken for this."
He added, however, that Russia has factories that can handle chemical arms disposal.
For his part, Russian Deputy Foreign
Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that the Syrian authorities do not mind Russia’s
participation in protecting the Syrian regions where the destruction of
chemical weapons will take place.
This comes as the Russian President's Special
Representative for the Middle
East, Mikhail
Bogdanov stressed that Russia might hand over on Thursday evidence to the UN
Security Council to prove that the opposition forces used chemical weapons in
Syria.
On another
note, France’s Interior Minister Manuel Valls said that
there are an estimated 130 French nationals or immigrants, most of them are
extremists, fighting in Syria, describing the situation as
"worrying".
On the field:
The
World Council of Churches
(WCC) urged its Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican member churches on Thursday
to lobby their congregations and national governments to support a political
solution to the war in Syria.
The Geneva-based WCC made the appeal after
a meeting with international envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi and former United
Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who both asked Christian leaders to help mobilize
public opinion for peace.
However, Turkey has closed one of its border gates to Syria after an al Qaeda-affiliated rebel group clashed with units of the Arab- and Western-backed Free Syrian Army in the Syrian town of Azaz near the Turkish frontier, a Turkish official said on Thursday.
"The Oncupinar border gate has been closed for security reasons as there is still confusion about what is happening on the Syrian side. All humanitarian assistance that normally goes through the gate has ceased," the official told Reuters.
This comes after a roadside bomb struck a bus in
Syria's central province on Thursday, killing 19 people, a local government
official said.
The explosion in the village of
Jbourin also wounded four people on the bus, according to the official from the
governor's office in Homs province who spoke on condition of anonymity in line
with regulations.
The village is predominantly
Alawite, an offshoot of Shiite Islam and a minority sect to which President
Bashar Assad belongs, but it also has Christians and Sunni Muslims.
Elsewhere in Syria, Syrian activist group said al-Qaeda-linked gunmen have captured a town near the Turkish border after heavy fighting with a rebel group.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said members of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant stormed the town of Aazaz, forcing members of the Northern Storm Brigade to withdraw.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said that the clashes broke out when ISIL fighters tried to detain a European doctor they accused of taking pictures of their positions in the area.
The German doctor escaped and is in a safe location, Abdul-Rahman said. Abdul-Rahman said three rebels and two jihadis were killed in the fighting that broke out Wednesday and continued until after midnight.
AP/REUTERS/LBCI
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