President Assad: US must Stop Arming Militants for Russian Plan to Work

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad confirmed Thursday that his country will start handing over information on its chemical weapons to international groups a month after it signs the Chemical Weapons Convention.
In an interview with Russian state-run news channel Rossiya-24, al-Assad stressed that “Syria is handing over its chemical weapons under international supervision because of Russia.”
“The US threats did not influence the decision,” he added.

In parallel, the Syrian President stated : “I believe the agreement will come into force a month after the signing and Syria will start submitting data on its chemical weapons stockpile to international organizations. These are standard procedures and we are going to stick to them.”
“It doesn’t mean that Syria will sign the documents, fulfill the obligations and that’s it. It’s a bilateral process aimed, first of all, at making the US stop pursuing its policy of threats against Syria,” al-Assad conditioned, adding that a lot would also depend on the extent to which Russia’s proposal is accepted.

“Terrorists are trying to provoke American strike against Syria,” al-Assad said. “Rebel forces are receiving chemical weapons from abroad,” he added.
He further called for thoroughly investigating the [chemical weapons used in the attack] to discover their components and which side used them.
“All states claim that they do not cooperate with terrorists, but we know for sure that the West provides them with logistical support,” he said, adding that the West and some countries in the region, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, “maintain direct contacts with terrorists and supply them with all kinds of arms.”

Talking to the Russian TV channel, al-Assad reiterated that the US has
failed to present evidence that the Syrian government was behind the incident.
“No country in the Middle East, including “Israel”, should possess weapons of mass destruction,” al-Assad said. “That would protect the region and the world from devastating and expensive wars in future,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said: “If we want stability in the Middle East, all the countries in the region should stick to [international] agreements. And “Israel” is the first that should do so, since it possessed nuclear, chemical, biological and all other kinds of weapons of mass destruction.”

The president recalled that a project on the elimination of WMD had been proposed, but the US opposed it “to allow “Israel” to have such weapons.
“Any kind of a war against Syria would destroy the entire region and lead to decades of instability in the Middle East,” the top of the Syrian state said.
“Syria is making serious efforts so that our country and other states in the region will not be involved in a new crazy war that some proponents of the war in the US are trying to unleash in the Middle East,” he said.

Earlier in the week, RT, citing unnamed sources, reported that rebels could launch a chemical attack on “Israel” by from government-controlled territories as a “major provocation.” Al-Assad did not rule out such a scenario. Toxic agents “were used against Syrian Army soldiers and civilians” and that therefore rebel forces did have these weapons, he said.
“Everyone is aware that terrorist groups and those who control them are trying to provoke an American strike. Earlier, they attempted to draw Israel into the Syrian crisis,” al-Assad said.