Syria chemical incident US pretext to justify intervention: President Assad

In an interview with the Belarusian TV channel ONT Thursday evening, the Syrian President said that all the Western media campaign on the alleged chemical incident in Khan Shaykhun was aimed at “demonizing the Syrian state”.

Washington used the chemical incident to justify its military intervention in Syria, as well, Assad said.

“It was part of the campaign waged on Syria with the aim of demonizing the Syrian state. In the initial stages of the war, they tried to promote this demonization among the Syrian people, i.e. convincing the Syrian people that their state is bad,” he said.

“But afterwards, they couldn’t do that, so they shifted towards convincing the Western public opinion in order to garner support for intervention and waging war,” he added.

Assad also went on to say that the allegations leveled against Damascus that it has deployed chemical weapons against its own people, were also aimed at manipulating public opinion in the United States.

“As you know Trump is facing an internal predicament and internal conflicts within his administration. He also has conflicts with other forces and lobbies in the United States, with the media, and the large corporations,” the Syrian president said.

“They wanted to wash their hands of the subject and to show that the problem in Syria is not ISIS and al-Nusra but the state which is killing its innocent citizens by using toxic gases,” Assad said referring to the Western governments.

The Syrian president also denounced Western governments for their support of the terrorists in the country that continue killing innocent people.

“Conversely, when the terrorists in Aleppo hijack a part of the city with its population, and kill people in the other part with daily shelling, nobody says anything about it,” Assad said.

“This doesn’t concern them. They defend the terrorists. And when we liberate this city of the terrorists, it is a violation of human rights because for them the terrorists are the humans, and all those who are not terrorists do not exist neither on the political nor on the humanitarian map,” he added.

He remained to be critical of the Western governments for their rejection of launching an investigation into the chemical incident in Khan Shaykhun.

“They refused to conduct investigations. Russia and Iran presented a draft proposal to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and they refused to approve an investigation, because it will prove only one thing, that they were lying,” he said.