TEHRAN (FNA)- Syrian President Bashar Assad announced that the United States is using the issue of chemical weapons as a pretext to carry out an attack against the Syrian army.
“The story with chemical weapons is a pretext for a direct military intervention and attacks on the Syrian army,” the President told Russian television channel NTV on Sunday.
“We fully eliminated chemical weapons. We haven’t had them in Syria since 2013,” he said.
The Syrian government surrendered its stockpile of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry.
Washington and its allies have often pointed the finger at the Syrian government over chemical attacks, while Damascus has consistently denied the claim.
“These provocations have nothing to do with reality. This is the result of their own imagination, and that of the media, and something … invented by their mass media is further disseminated across the world through the Internet and other media. That’s why it is impossible to prevent this provocation. Americans constantly lie and attack immediately,” the Syrian President stated.
“When there is no respect for international rules, when there are no efficient UN bodies, you may not speak about preventing provocations and the world lives upon the jungle law,” he added.
Assad also said in the same interview that Syria would not accept any Western money to help rebuild the country, adding that “we have enough strength to rebuild the country. If we don’t have money, we will borrow from our friends, from Syrians living abroad”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Assad stressed that the Syrian army would regain control of the country’s north by force if militants there refused to surrender.
“We have chosen two paths: the first and most important one is reconciliation… The second path is to attack terrorists if they don’t surrender and refuse to make peace,” Assad said, adding that “we will fight with them (militants) and return control by force. It is certainly not the best option for us, but it’s the only way to get control of the country”.
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, FNA
The 21st Century