At the UN General Assembly, Syria's foreign minister?lashed out at Washington, accusing extremists of prolonging the crisis, and denouncing other neighboring Middle Eastern countries.
Walid al-Moallem, Foreign Minister of Syria, is guided to the podium before speaking at the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters, Monday.
Jason DeCrow/AP
EnlargeSyria's foreign minister brought his regime's case before the world Monday, accusing the US and its allies of promoting "terrorism" and blaming everyone from neighbors and extremists to the media for escalating the war ? except the Syrian government.
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Addressing ministers and diplomats from the United Nation's 193 member states as fighting spread in the historic Old City of Aleppo, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem lashed out at calls in Washington and in Arab and European capitals for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down as interference in Syria's domestic affairs.
Al-Moallem accused extremists of prolonging the crisis and denounced countries such as the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey for supporting the opposition's "terrorism."
"This terrorism which is externally supported is accompanied by unprecedented media provocation based on igniting religious extremism sponsored by well-known states in the region," he told the U.N. General Assembly.
Members of the opposition said it was common knowledge that these neighboring Arab countries were supporting and financing the rebels, but said the Assad government had brought it upon itself after cracking down on protests that began peacefully 18 months ago.
"It is the regime's mindless, brutal and criminal, military crackdown that pushed the Syrian people to ask for help from the international community, from NATO and from the devil himself if necessary to protect them," Haitham Manna, a Paris-based veteran Syrian dissident who heads the external branch of the National Coordination Body opposition group, told The Associated Press.
Al-Moallem's speech followed his meeting with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in which the U.N. chief "raised in the strongest terms the continued killings, massive destruction, human rights abuses, and aerial and artillery attacks committed by the government," according to a statement by his press office. "He stressed that it was the Syrian people who were being killed every day, and appealed to the Government of Syria to show compassion to its own people."
The Syrian foreign minister in his address invited the opposition to "work together to stop the shedding of Syrian blood" and said that a Syrian-led dialogue could produce a "more pluralistic and democratic" country.
The opposition called the speech a classic case of regime "propaganda," and dismissed his calls for dialogue as not genuine.
"While the brutal and delusional Syrian regime continues to pay lip service to diplomacy, its actions over the past 18 months have demonstrated beyond any doubt that they have no interest in meaningful reform or dialogue" Radwan Ziadeh, a US-based spokesman for the chief opposition group, the Syrian National Council, said in a statement.
Underscoring how deeply the Syrian foreign minister felt that conspiratal hands were playing in the war-ridden country, he said that armed groups were inciting civilians in border areas to flee to neighboring countries "to fabricate a refugee crisis."
Up to 3,000 Syrians are leaving the country every day, said Vincent Cochetel of the U.N. refugee agency. Some 300,000 Syrians are registered, or waiting to register with the U.N. in Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon and the agency expects the number to grow to 700,000 by the year's end.
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