President Bashar al-Assad accused Israel on Sunday of trying to destabilize Syria by attacking a military research base outside Damascus last week, and said Syria was able to confront "current threats ...and aggression" against it.
Syria's state news agency SANA said Assad made the remarks in a meeting with Saeed Jalili, Iran's National Security Council secretary in the Syrian capital. His stance coincided with the Syrian TV's airing of scenes showing the damages of the Israeli raid which targeted a research center near Damascus on Wednesday. It was Assad's first reported response to this attack.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak also commented on the attack.
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After Russia
voiced its willingness to hold regular contacts with the Syrian opposition and
welcomed the readiness of the Syrian Opposition Coalition leader Ahmad Moaz AlKhatib
to engage in a dialogue with representatives of Assad’s regime without
preconditions, Syria told Al Thawra al Houkoumiya newspaper that Russia’s
stance on the Syrian crisis is “unwavering” and defends international
covenants.
Earlier, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that his talks with the Syrian opposition leader in Munich one day earlier could contribute to finding a solution to the war in Syria.
Salehi said Syrian National Coalition leader Moaz Alkhatib's comments to him, in their talks late on Saturday, that he would be willing to talk with representatives of the Syrian government if prisoners were released represented "a good step forward".
"If we want to stop the bloodshed we cannot continue putting the blame one side on the other," Salehi told the Munich Security Conference, adding that he was ready to talk again to the opposition and wanted to be "part of the solution".
Meanwhile, from Munich, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu said that a dialogue between the Syrian regime and the opposition will
not pave the way for a solution in Syria.
On the armament of the Syrian opposition, the New York Times
Daily reported that the White House had rejected a plan set by the former U.S.
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and the former head of the CIA to arm and
train Syrian opposition fighters “due to fears of a possible involvement of
Washington in the Syrian crisis and the fall of weapons in the wrong hands.”
The Syrian
crisis was at the core of talks held in the UAE between Jordan’s King Abdullah
II and the Emirati president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, according to
the Jordanian Royal Court.
On the
field, amid ongoing clashes and shelling in many different Syrian cities, SANA
reported that regime troops killed many terrorists and seized their weapons in
Damascus Reef, Homs and Deir al-Zour.
REUTERS/LBCI
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