Syria's foreign minister claimed
Monday that his government is fighting a war against al-Qaida-linked militants
who eat human hearts and dismember people while they are still alive, then send
their limbs to family members.
Walid al-Moallem, addressing
world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York, also charged that the US,
Britain and France had blocked the naming of the real perpetrators of chemical
weapons attacks in Syria, which he blamed on the opposition.
He claimed "terrorists"
fighting the regime in the civil war are being supplied with chemical weapons,
but he did not name specific nations accused of supplying them.
President Barack Obama told the
same forum last week that it was the President Bashar Assad's regime that was
behind a chemical weapons attack in August that killed hundreds in the Damascus
suburbs and brought threats of a retaliatory US strike.
Syria subsequently committed to
getting rid of its stockpiles of chemical weapons and the UN Security Council
voted unanimously on Friday to oblige it to do so based on a plan made by the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Al-Moallem claimed that it is
clear to all that offshoots of al-Qaida "the most dangerous terrorist
organization in the world" is
fighting in the Syrian civil war. But some countries refuse to recognize it, he
charged.
"The scenes of murder,
manslaughter and eating human hearts were shown on TV screens, but did not
touch blind consciences," al-Moallem said.
"There are innocent
civilians whose heads are put on the grill just because they violate the
extremist ideology and deviant views of al-Qaida. In Syria ... there are
murderers who dismember human bodies into pieces while still alive and send
their limbs to their families, just because those citizens are defending a
unified and secular Syria."
A video published online in May
purported to show a member of Syria's armed opposition eating a human heart
while the body of a Syrian soldier lay close by. The video drew condemnation
from human rights groups as well as the Syrian National Coalition, one of the
main opposition groups.
Another video the minister
referred to purportedly showed rebels grilling the head of a Syrian soldier.
Al-Moallem said his government
was committed to a political solution to the conflict, which he called a war
against "terror" and not a civil war as the international community
has been referring to it for months. He added that "terrorists" from
83 countries are operating in Syria.
The Syrian regime has long
referred to the entire opposition rising up against Assad as
"terrorists."
"Our commitment to a
political solution does not mean watching our mosques and churches destroyed,
as is happening in Homs and Aleppo, and is happening now in the town of
Maaloula, the only place in the world whose people still speak the language of
Jesus Christ."
Al-Moallem said armed Islamist
groups in Syria are using "perverted concepts of religion that have
nothing to do with Islam."
The Syrian foreign minister also
touched on regional issues drawing attention to his government's call a decade
ago to making the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.
"Syria stresses that
establishing a free zone of weapons of mass destruction in the region is
unachievable without the accession of Israel, the only nuclear power in the
region, to all treaties banning such weapons," he said.
AP