24/09/2013 09:24
Assad: Syria committed to destroy chemical weapons
President Bashar Assad pledged in an interview broadcast Monday to honor an agreement to surrender Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons, but he said that rebels might try to block international arms inspectors from doing their work, The Associated Press reported.
As battles continued across Syria, new Associated Press video of an attack Sunday night showed the regime's helicopters dropping barrel bombs on opposition-held areas, creating chaotic scenes of destruction.
In a sign of worsening infighting among the rebels, a top al-Qaida commander in Syria was killed in an ambush by rival, Western-backed group — an assassination sure to raise tensions among factions seeking to topple the regime.
Assad's comments came as world leaders gathered in New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly, where the use of chemical weapons in Syria's civil war was high on the agenda.
The Syrian leader told Chinese state TV that Damascus is dedicated to implementing the agreement reached between Russia and the U.S. to surrender its chemical weapons to international control. Syria's stockpile, he said, is "in safe areas and locations and under the full control of the Syrian Arab Army."
Assad cautioned, however, that the rebels might block inspectors from reaching some of the locations, in order to frame the government.
"I'm referring to places where gunmen exist. Those gunmen might want to stop the experts' arrival," Assad told CCTV in the interview, which was shot Sunday in Damascus and broadcast Monday.
Under the agreement brokered Sept. 14 in Geneva, inspectors are to be in Syria by November and all components of the chemical weapons program are to be removed from the country or destroyed by the middle of next year.
The revelations of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal became public after an Aug. 21 attack near Damascus that a U.N. report found included the use of the nerve agent sarin. Hundreds of people died in the attack that brought Washington to the brink of military intervention before the accord was struck between the U.S. and Russia.