SYRIA ACCUSED POWER WEST GIVE CHEMICAL WEAPONS TO OPPOSITION

     New York, 25 Dzulqa’idah 1434/1 October 2013 (MINA) – Syria’s foreign minister Walid al-Muallem has accused at the front the UN General Assembly on Monday, that regional and Western powers of providing chemical weapons to the armed opposition.

     Al-Muallem told that those weapons were used in an August attack that killed hundreds, Al Jazeera quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

     Al-Muallem further alleged that while the Syrian government had co-operated with a UN inverstigation into the August 21 attack near Damascus, the commission was “prevented” from investigating who perpetrated the attack by the US and its allies.

     “Syria, by acceding to the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, proves its commitment against the use of such weapons,” he said.

     The Syrian foreign minister said that his country was not facing a “civil war”, rather it was fighting “a war against terror”.

     Al-Muallem also termed the US and EU’s sanctions against members of the Syrian leadership as “immoral and inhuman”, saying that they have worsened the conditions of Syria’s millions of internally displaced peoples and refugees “due to the activities of armed groups”.

     “I appeal, from this platform, to Syrian citizens to return to their towns and villages where the state guarantees their safe return,” he said, assuring the regime’s “readiness to exert all efforts to deliver aid from international organisations to all Syrian citizens wherever they are”.

     AL-Muallem also endorsed a political solution for the crisis in Syria, saying that talks must begin without preconditions, and argued that “free and fair elections remain the only solution to decide on the options of the Syrian people”.

      The foreign minister’s call comes a day after he told the Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen television that senior Damascus government officials would not sit down to talk with the Syrian National Coalition, the main organised political opposition bloc.

      He said the group “is not popular in Syria and lost a lot among Syrians when it called on the US to attack Syria militarily, meaning that it called for attacking the Syrian people”.

      Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had previously said the government would not hold dialogue with members of the armed opposition. (T/P09/P04).

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)