Assad doesn’t rule out US attack

CARACAS: Syrian President Bashar Assad said in a TV interview that he does not discount the possibility of a US military attack even though threatened action was forestalled when he agreed to give up chemical weapons.
Assad also said in an interview broadcast by Venezuela’s state-run Telesur network that his government has confessions from rebels that they brought chemical weapons into the civil war-wracked nation.
According to the broadcast’s Spanish dubbing, Assad said all evidence pointed to rebel responsibility for the attack.
He said that Syrian authorities had uncovered chemical arms caches and labs and that the evidence had been turned over to Russia, which brokered the deal that helped persuade US President Barack Obama to pull back from threatened military action over an Aug. 21 gas attack that killed civilians in a Damascus suburb.
Assad predicted during the 40-minute interview that “terrorists” would try to block access of UN inspectors who enter Syria to secure the government’s chemical arsenal.
Assad also accused the Obama administration of lying to US citizens by claiming it has proof that Assad’s government was responsible for the Aug. 21 gas attack.
Syria is committed to the convention against chemical weapons it signed under a US-Russian deal and sees “no obstacles” to its implementation, Assad said.
The Syrian leader insisted that his regime was complying with a deal under which Damascus will turn over its chemical weapons for destruction.
“Syria is generally committed to all the agreements that it signs,” he said in an interview published in full by the Syrian state news agency SANA on Thursday.
He said Damascus had begun to send the required details of its chemical arsenal to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons which is overseeing the deal, and that OPCW inspectors were expected to visit Syria. “Experts (from the OPCW) will come to Syria in the coming period to look into the status of these weapons,” he said.
“As the Syrian government, there are no serious obstacles.
“But there is always the possibility that the terrorists will obstruct the work of the experts by preventing them from accessing certain places,” Assad added.