Assad says Europe will pay the price for arming rebels

PanARMENIAN.Net - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned that Europe will “pay the price” for arming rebels trying to topple him and rejected accusations that he’s deployed chemical weapons against them as baseless.

According to Bloomberg, in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in Damascus, Assad warned that European nations seeking to send weapons to rebels will only export terrorists back to Europe. He also said the U.S., UK and France hadn’t substantiated their chemical weapons allegations.

“If Paris, London and Washington had a single piece of evidence for their claims, they would have produced it for the world public,” Assad told FAZ.

He granted the interview after President Barack Obama, accusing Assad of crossing a “red line” by using chemical weapons, last week ratcheted up U.S. support for the rebels with a decision to send them light arms.

Assad said using chemical weapons would be “illogical” if conventional weapons could be deployed -- and added that Syria has never confirmed or denied possessing chemical arms.

Instead, he accused rebel militia of using such weapons and said France and the UK had blocked a United Nations measure to investigate such a deployment in Aleppo.

“Everything that’s been said about the use of chemical weapons is a continuation of lies against Syria,” Assad told FAZ. “It’s the attempt to justify more military intervention.”

The Syrian leader also singled out the French and British governments, which spearheaded an end to the European Union’s weapons embargo last month, for wanting to ship weapons that he said “will ultimately end up in the hands of terrorists.”