AFP, Washington, 10 Jan 2012 – The United States said Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used a speech to try to ‘deflect the attention’ of his people from his commitment to end his violent crackdown.
In a speech, Assad blamed foreign plotters Tuesday for the deadly 10-month-old protests against his regime and vowed to crush their ‘terrorism’ with an iron fist.
‘He’s doing everything but what he needs to do,’ US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.
She said he must meet the commitments Syria made to the Arab League to end the violence, withdraw heavy weapons from cities, admit journalists, free political prisoners and allow for a real political dialogue.
‘So that’s what we’re looking to see in Syria, and obviously this was an effort to deflect the attention of his own people from the real problem,’ Nuland told reporters.
‘Throughout the course of this speech, Assad manages to blame a foreign conspiracy that’s so vast with regard to the situation in Syria that it now includes the Arab League, most of the Syrian opposition, the entire international community,’ Nuland said.
‘He throws responsibility on everybody but back on himself,’ she said.
‘And with regard to his own responsibility for the violence in Syria, he seems to aggressively deny any responsibility or any hand in the role of his own security forces,’ she added.
In the speech just hours before the UN Security Council began discussions on Syria, Assad denied security forces had orders to fire on civilian protesters, even as activists reported regime gunmen killed 13 more civilians.
Assad said the unrest, which the United Nations estimated last month has cost more than 5,000 lives since March, would only come to an end ‘when the flow of funds and weapons coming from abroad stops.’
Assad insisted security personnel had no orders to shoot, saying, ‘By law, nobody can open fire, except in self-defense.’