REPORT: Assad says Syria will respect UN chemical weapons accords - Italian TV

     
Syria will respect United Nations accords on chemical weapons, President Bashar al-Assad told Italian television station RaiNews24 on Sunday.           

"We joined the international agreement against the acquisition and use of chemical weapons even before this resolution was passed," he said when asked if Syria would comply with Friday's U.N. resolution.           

The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution on Friday that demands the eradication of Syria's chemical weapons but does not threaten automatic punitive action against Assad's government if it does not comply.           

"The central part of it is based on what we ourselves wanted. So it is not about a resolution, in reality it is our own intention," he said, according to the Italian translation of his remarks.            
"In 2003, the U.N. Security Council proposed liberating this entire region from these arms and declaring the Middle East a region free of chemical weapons. So it is obvious, we have to respect these conditions, it is part of our history," he said. "We have to respect all treaties we sign."          

The U.S.-Russia deal averted punitive U.S. military action against Assad's government, which Washington blamed for the Aug. 21 sarin nerve gas attack on a Damascus suburb that killed hundreds. The Syrian government and its ally Russia blamed anti-government rebels for the attack.
         
UN inspectors:              

Chemical weapons inspectors who will oversee Syria's destruction of its chemical weapons said their first priority is to help the country scrap its ability to manufacture such weapons by a Nov. 1 deadline using every means possible.              

The inspectors said Sunday that may include smashing mixing equipment with sledgehammers, blowing up delivery missiles, driving tanks over empty shells or filling them with concrete, and  running machines without lubricant so they seize up.                 

On Friday, the U.N. Security Council ordered the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to help Syria destroy its chemical weapons by mid-2014.  
        
On Sunday, inspectors met with media to explain their plan.             

The organization had the inspectors speak on condition of anonymity out of concern for their safety in Syria during its civil war.

On the field:         

A Syrian government air raid struck a high school in a rebel-held city in the country's north on Sunday, killing at least 12 people, most of them students, activists said.
                
The airstrike took place in the city of Raqqa, which is located on the Euphrates River and is the only provincial capital under rebel control in Syria's civil war, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Right said. President Bashar Assad's regime has relied heavily on its air force to strike opposition-held areas, including Raqqa.                

The attack appeared to hit the yard in front of the school early Sunday morning, which is the first day of the work week at public schools in Syria.                

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said at least eight of the dead were students, and that the death toll is likely to rise because many of the wounded are in critical condition.              
Amateur videos posted online showed at least nine bodies, some of them missing limbs, lying on pockmarked-pavement strewn with rubble. At least four of the bodies appeared to be of young people. Another video shows pools of blood on the ground and a concrete-block wall destroyed in the bombing.                   

The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting of the events depicted.                


AP/REUTERS


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