Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad said a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town was a “fabrication” to justify a US military strike.
“Definitely, 100 per cent for us, it’s fabrication … our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack,” Assad said in his first interview since US cruise missiles hit a central Syrian air base.
Assad said his government handed over all its chemical weapons stockpiles in 2013 and could not have been behind last week’s suspected sarin attack.
“There was no order to make any attack … we gave up our arsenal a few years ago. Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them,” Assad said.
He warned that he would only allow an “impartial” external investigation of last week’s suspected chemical attack.
“We can only allow any investigation when it’s impartial, when we make sure that unbiased countries will participate in this delegation in order to make sure that they won’t use it for politicised purposes,” Assad said.
Government ally Russia on Wednesday vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution demanding Syria co-operate with an international investigation of the attack.
Assad said peace talks on resolving his country’s war were ineffective because Washington was “not serious” about ending the conflict.
“The United States is not serious in achieving any political solution. They want to use it as an umbrella for the terrorists,” he said.
A barrage of US missiles at a Damascus military airport had not diminished his government’s ability to carry out strikes. “Our firepower, our ability to attack the terrorists hasn’t been affected by this strike.
AFP
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