Syria's Al-Halqi Says His Country Will Become 'Graveyard of Invaders'
Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi said Wednesday that Syria will turn into a "graveyard of the invaders" in case of a Western military intervention.
Syria will "surprise the aggressors as it surprised them in" the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when Arab forces caught Israel off guard, and become "the graveyard of the invaders," he said, quoted by state television.
The "colonialist threats" of Western powers "do not terrorize us because of the will and determination of the Syrian people, who will not accept being humiliated," Halqi said.
Meanwhile, deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Muqdad said the West had pushed anti-regime rebels to use poison gas, while blaming it on the government, as a pretext for a U.S.-led military intervention.
"The terrorist groups used sarin gas in several areas of the country... with the encouragement of the Americans, the British and French," Muqdad told reporters.
"The encouragement of these Western countries must stop because by defending these terrorists... these groups will soon turn their chemical arms against the people of Europe."
Muqdad was speaking after a meeting with U.N. disarmament envoy Angela Kane, the leader of a team of U.N. weapons inspectors.
Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar al-Jaafari, meanwhile, told the state news agency SANA that rebels had used chemical arms to provoke a Western intervention.
He also said that dozens of Syrian soldiers inhaled poison gas in new incidents in his country and called on the U.N. to investigate.
Ambassador Jaafari told reporters he had asked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to extend the mandate of a U.N. chemical weapons team now in Syria to include the "heinous" new incidents.
He said "dozens" of Syrian soldiers were being treated in hospitals after the incidents on August 22, 24 and 25 in the Damascus suburbs. Jaafari gave no other details.
The envoy spoke as the U.N. envoys for Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States held their first talks on a British draft U.N. Security Council resolution condemning a suspected chemical weapon attack near Damascus on August 21, which western nations blamed on President Bashar Assad's forces.
Source: Agence France Presse
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