US plays role in Syria conflict by backing gangs: Assad

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says Washington plays a role in the turmoil in Syria by supporting the armed gangs to destabilize the country.

Assad told the German ARD television channel in an interview on July 5, which was aired on Sunday, that the United States is “part of the conflict,” and that “they offer the umbrella and political support to those gangs to… destabilize Syria.”

“As long as you offer any kind of support to terrorists, you are partner. Whether you send them armaments or money or public support, political support in the United Nations, anywhere,” Assad said.

“The president should not run away from challenge and we have a national challenge now in Syria,” Assad said.

He also stated that the armed gangs in Syria carry out atrocities while they “wear soldier uniforms, our army uniforms, in order to say ‘that was the army’,” specifically referring to the May 25 massacre in the town of Houla in the central province of Homs that killed 108 people, including 49 children and 34 women.

The latest remarks by the Syrian president come at a time when the anti-Syria Western regimes have been calling for Assad to step down.

Russia and China remain opposed to the Western drive to oust the Syrian president.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on June 30 that Assad “will still have to go.”

Diplomats meeting in Geneva on the same day reached an agreement on a Syrian-led transitional governing body that could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups, and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent, said UN-Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan.

The US secretary of state added that the Syrian president “will never pass the mutual consent test.”

On July 3, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that some Western participants in the Geneva meeting “have started in their public statements to distort the agreements that were reached.”

The New York Times published a report on June 21, quoting some US and Arab intelligence officials as saying that a group of “CIA officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey” and that the agents are helping the anti-Syria governments decide which gangs inside the Arab country will “receive arms to fight the Syrian government.”

President Assad said on June 3 that Syria is “facing a war from abroad,” and that attempts are being made to “weaken Syria, [and] breach its sovereignty.”