Assad Blasts France for Supporting 'Terrorists'
By Ben McPartland
April 21, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "The
Local" - President Assad, told France 2 TV
channel that Paris was supporting "terrorists" in his country and scolded
President François Hollande for his policy towards the crisis in Syria.
In August last year Hollande admitted that France had been
supplying weapons to Syrian rebel groups "for months".
"We cannot leave the only Syrians who are preparing a
democracy ... without weapons," Hollande said at the time.
But Assad said France had become "a kind of satellite for
American foreign policy in the region. [France] is not independent, it has no
weight and no credibility," he said.
Assad criticized the west aiding the rebels claimed it has
resulted in "terrorists infiltrating the country".
"They have begun to attack civilians and destroy properties.
Our role is to defend our society," he said.
In the wide-ranging interview the Syrian leader also denied
being behind alleged chemical attacks in northwestern Idlib province last month,
and accused the United States of overseeing the creation of the Islamic
State group.
"The IS was created in Iraq in 2006 under the supervision of
the Americans. The IS came from Iraq to Syria because chaos is contagious," he
said, slamming France and other western nations for supporting the jihadists by
considering them as the moderate opposition.
"Is it democratic to send weapons to terrorists and to support
them? So I have the right to support the terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo
for example?"
In an interview with a Swedish newspaper last week, Assad had
warned that the terrorist attacks in Paris are just "the tip of the iceberg"
when it comes to terrorism in Europe.
"As long as the backyard of Europe, especially the
Mediterranean and Northern Africa, is in chaos and full of terrorists, Europe
cannot be safe," Assad told
Swedish newspaper Expressen.
"Everything that happened in Europe, and I mean terrorist
attacks, we warned from the very beginning of the crisis," he said.
"We’ve had experience with those kind of terrorists for 50
years now. They don’t listen, so what happened was warned of before, and what we
saw in France, in Charlie Hebdo, the suicide attempts in Copenhagen, in London,
in Spain ten years ago, this is only the tip of the iceberg; terrorism is a huge
mountain," he added.
The French government has strictly ruled out any talks with
Assad and earlier this year Hollande accused a group of French MPs of a "moral
failing" after they travelled to Syria to meet the President Bashar al-Assad,
whom PM Manuel Valls described as a "butcher"
A cross-party group of four French lawmakers made an
unofficial trip to the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday and held talks
with senior ministers.
Three of the MPs -- not including one from the ruling
Socialist party -- then met with the Syrian leader.
Hollande condemned the talks, saying France cannot have a
dialogue with a "dictator who has bombed his own people and who has used
chemical weapons to destroy human lives, Syrian lives -- the lives of
children, women".
The Local/AFP (ben.mcpartland@thelocal.com)
