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Assad says arsenal will take a year to destroy
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Syrian President Bashar Assad says it will take at least a year and US$1 billion for Syria to surrender its chemical weapons.
In an interview with Fox News, he insisted Syria was not gripped by civil war but the victim of infiltration by foreign-backed al-Qaida fighters.
Meanwhile al-Qaida-linked fighters tightened their grip on a border town yesterday.
Assad’s TV appearance came as UN envoys debated a draft resolution that would enshrine a joint US-Russian plan to secure and neutralize his banned weapons in international law.
The plan is to be discussed at a meeting in The Hague on Sunday by the world’s chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Assad insisted his forces had not been behind an August 21 gas attack on the Damascus suburbs that killed hundreds of civilians, but vowed nevertheless to hand over his deadly arsenal.
It was his second interview this month with US television, and one of a series of meetings with Western journalists to counter mounting political pressure from the West.
After last month’s barrage of sarin-loaded rockets, which the West says was clearly launched by the Syrian government, US President Barack Obama called for US-led punitive military strikes.
But with US lawmakers and the public not sold on the virtues of another Middle East military adventure, Assad’s ally Russia seized the opportunity to propose a diplomatic solution.
Pushed by President Vladimir Putin, the White House agreed to hold fire while Russia and the international community — with Assad’s agreement — draws up a disarmament plan.
Assad reiterated his pledge to cooperate, but insisted he had not been forced to do so by threats of military action.
“I think it’s a very complicated operation, technically. And it needs a lot of money, about a billion,” he told Fox News.
“So it depends, you have to ask the experts what they mean by quickly. It has a certain schedule. It needs a year, or maybe a little bit more.”
Asked why he had used force to repress a popular uprising and triggered a two-and-a-half year war that has claimed 110,000 lives, Assad said Syria was a victim of terrorism.
“What we have is not civil war. What we have is war. It’s a new kind of war,” he said, alleging that Islamist guerrillas from more than 80 countries had joined the fight.
“We know that we have tens of thousands of jihadists ... we are on the ground, we live in this country,” he said, disputing an expert report that suggested 30,000 out of around 100,000 rebels were hardliners.
“What I can tell you is that ... 80 to 90 percent of the underground terrorists are al-Qaida and their offshoots.”
Meanwhile, the situation on the ground became still more complex and dangerous, when — according to residents — an al-Qaida front group overran a Syrian border town on Wednesday.
“The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has seized complete control of Azaz. They are in control of the town’s entrances,” said Abu Ahmad, an activist in the town.
The fighting in Azaz began when ISIS fighters tried to kidnap a German doctor there, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which also said he was now safe.
While Assad pursued his media counterattack, envoys from the five UN Security Council powers — the US, Russia, France, Britain and China — held two hours of talks on a resolution backing the Russia-US plan.
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