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| Syrian refugees arrive at the Turkish Cilvegozu gate border, Monday, Sept. 2, 2013. Routine prevailed at a US-Turkish airbase in southern Turkey on Monday, a day after the US alleged that sarin gas was used in an August chemical weapons attack in Syria. |
PARIS (AP) --
Syria's president warned Monday that the Middle East is a "powder keg"
and potential Western military strikes against his country risk
triggering a regional war.
In an interview
with French newspaper Le Figaro, Bashar Assad also was quoted as saying
that Syria has challenged the U.S. and France to provide proof to
support their allegations that Damascus has used chemical weapons, but
that the leaders of both countries "have been incapable of doing that,
including before their own peoples."
President
Barack Obama and his French counterpart, Francois Hollande, have
accused Assad's regime of carrying out a deadly chemical attack against
rebel-held suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21. The Syrian government denies
the allegations, and blames opposition fighters.
Obama
initially seemed poised to launch military action, but abruptly
announced on Saturday he would first ask Congress for authorization.
Hollande also has called for a forceful response against Assad, but is
awaiting a decision from Washington first.
If the U.S. and France decide to strike, Assad said "everyone will lose control of the situation."
"Chaos and extremism will spread. The risk of a regional war exists," he added.
Asked
whether France, which has been a staunch supporter of the opposition,
has become an enemy of Syria, Assad said that whoever contributes
"financially and militarily to terrorists is an enemy of the Syrian
people."
"The French people are not our enemy,
but the policy of their government is hostile to the Syrian people.
Insofar as French government policy is hostile to the Syrian people,
this state will be its enemy," he said.
As the
U.S. has been presenting its case to a wary public, the French
government on Monday published a nine-page intelligence synopsis that
concluded that the Syrian regime launched an attack on Aug. 21 that
involved a "massive use of chemical agents." The report also said that
Assad government could carry out similar strikes in the future.
The
U.S. said it has proof that the Assad regime is behind attacks that
Washington claims killed at least 1,429 people, including more than 400
children.
Russia, which along with Iran has
been a staunch supporter of Assad through the conflict, brushed aside
Western evidence of an alleged Syrian regime role.
"What
our American, British and French partners showed us in the past and
have showed just recently is absolutely unconvincing," Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday at the country's top diplomatic
school. "And when you ask for more detailed proof they say all of this
is classified so we cannot show this to you."
Lavrov
said "there was nothing specific there, no geographic coordinates, no
names, no proof that the tests were carried out by the professionals."
He did not describe the tests further.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin proposed Monday to send a delegation of
Russian lawmakers to the U.S. to discuss the situation in Syria with
members of Congress. Two top Russian legislators suggested that to
Putin, saying polls have shown little support among Americans for armed
intervention in Syria to punish its regime for an alleged chemical
weapons attack.
On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry said the U.S. received new physical evidence in the
form of blood and hair samples that show sarin gas was used in the Aug.
21 attack. It was not immediately clear whether that evidence had been
shared with Russia.
U.N. chemical inspectors
toured the stricken areas last week, collecting biological and soil
samples, but it is not clear when they will present their findings.
The
Obama administration has failed to bring together a broad international
coalition in support of military action, having so far only secured the
support of France.
Britain's parliament
narrowly voted against British participation in a military strike last
week, despite appeals by Prime Minister David Cameron, and the Arab
League has stopped short of endorsing a Western strike against Syria.
In
an emergency meeting on Sunday, the 22-state League called on the
United Nations and the international community to take "deterrent"
measures under international law to stop the Syrian regime's crimes, but
could not agree on whether to back U.S. military strikes.
Russia or China would likely veto any U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning a Western strike against Syria.
China
is "highly concerned" about possible unilateral military action against
Syria and believes the international community must "avoid complicating
the Syrian issue and dragging the Middle East down into further
disaster," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Monday.
In Washington, the Obama administration was lobbying to secure domestic support.
Obama
was to meet Monday with former political rival Sen. John McCain at the
White House, hoping the foreign policy hawk will help sell the idea of
U.S. military intervention.
On Capitol Hill,
senior administration officials briefed lawmakers in private on Sunday
to explain why the U.S. was compelled to act against Assad. Further
meetings were planned from Monday to Wednesday.
The
Syrian conflict erupted in March 2011 as an uprising against Assad that
later degenerated into a civil war. More than 100,000 Syrians have been
killed in the conflict.
In Damascus, the
Syria representative of the U.N. refugee agency, Tarik Kurdi, said that
five million Syrians have been displaced inside the country by the war.
In
addition, nearly 2 million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries,
according to previous U.N. figures, bringing the total number of
uprooted Syrians to about 7 million, or nearly one-third the country's
estimated population of 23 million.
Kurdi said the need for aid is far greater than what the international community has provided so far.
"Whatever
efforts we have exerted and whatever the U.N. has provided in
humanitarian aid, it is only a drop in the sea of humanitarian needs in
Syria," he told The Associated Press. The funding gap "is very, very
wide," he added.
