Assad says Turkey will pay for backing Syrian rebels

By Ece Toksabay

ISTANBUL | Fri Oct 4, 2013 10:33am EDT

(Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told Turkey it will pay a heavy price for backing rebels fighting to oust him, accusing it of harboring "terrorists" along its border who would soon turn against their hosts.

In an interview with Turkey's Halk TV due to be broadcast later on Friday, Assad called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan "bigoted" and said Ankara was allowing terrorists to cross into Syria to attack the army and Syrian civilians.

 

 

"It is not possible to put terrorism in your pocket and use it as a card because it is like a scorpion which won't hesitate to sting you at the first opportunity," Assad said, according to a transcript from Halk TV, which is close to Turkey's opposition.

"In the near future, these terrorists will have an impact on Turkey and Turkey will pay a heavy price for it."
Turkey, which shares a 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria and has NATO's second largest deployable armed forces, is one of Assad's fiercest critics and a staunch supporter of the opposition, although it denies arming the rebels.

It shelters about a quarter of the 2 million people who have fled Syria and has often seen the conflict spill across its frontier, responding in kind when mortars and shells fired from Syria have hit its soil.
It has also allowed rebel fighters to cross in and out of Syria but has grown alarmed, along with Western allies opposed to Assad, by divisions among their ranks and the deepening influence of radical Islamists in Syria.

Last month, the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seized Azaz, about 5 km (3 miles) from the border with Turkey, and has repeatedly clashed with the local Northern Storm brigade since then.
"Right now, Syria is headed for a sectarian war," Erdogan said in an interview on Turkish television late on Thursday.

"This is the danger we are facing."
Turkey has bolstered its defenses and sent additional troops to the border with Syria in recent weeks and its parliament voted on Thursday to extend by a year a mandate authorizing a military deployment to Syria if needed.

UNDECIDED ON ELECTIONS
Assad accused Erdogan, whose AK Party has its roots in conservative Islamist politics, of a sectarian agenda.

"Before the crisis, Erdogan had never mentioned reforms or democracy, he was never interested in these issues... Erdogan only wanted the Muslim Brotherhood to return to Syria, that was his main and core aim," he said.

Erdogan's government strongly denies any such agenda.
His aides point to his cultivation of good relations with Assad for years before the conflict and say Turkey does not see Syria's Sunni Muslims and its Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ism to which Assad belongs, as fixed blocs.

Assad said he had not yet decided whether to run in presidential elections next year because the situation on the ground was changing rapidly, adding that he would only put himself forward if Syrians wanted him to. The picture will become clearer in the next 4-5 months, Assad said.

The United Nations estimates that more than 100,000 people have died since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011 and has been notified of at least 14 chemical attacks.

The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution last week that demands the eradication of Syria's chemical weapons and endorses a plan for a political transition in Syria agreed on at an international conference in Geneva last year.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said after the vote that major powers hoped to hold a second peace conference on Syria in mid-November in Geneva.

In his interview, Assad again denied his forces had used chemical weapons and blamed such attacks on the rebels. Asked whether he expected the Geneva process to accelerate if Syria handed over its chemical weapons, Assad said he saw no link.

"Practically these issues are not related. Geneva II is about Syria's own domestic political process and cutting neighboring countries' weapons and financial support to terrorists," he said.

If I am not wanted, won't contest elections: Bashar Assad

photo of Bashar al-Assad

Beirut: Syrian President Bashar Assad said it's still too early to say whether he'll run for re-election next year, but suggested he would refrain from seeking a third term - if he feels that's what most Syrians want him to do.

Assad, who spoke in an interview with Turkey's private Halk TV, made no mention of his government's role in the civil war that has killed at least 100,000 people so far, instead blaming foreign fighters and governments, including Turkey's, for the bloodshed.

The interview, broadcast late Thursday, was the latest in a series the Syrian president has given to foreign media as part of a charm offensive in the wake of the Russian-brokered deal that averted the threat of a U.S. airstrike over an August chemical weapons attack, which killed hundreds of people.

Meanwhile, heavy fighting Friday was underway in different parts of Syria, including the southern regions of Daraa and Quneitra on the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, reported anti-government activists.

Clashes also continued between Kurdish gunmen and members of al-Qaida's Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, mostly in the northern provinces of Hassakeh and Aleppo.

Regarding a potential bid for another seven-year term, Assad said "the picture will be clearer" in the next four to five months because Syria is going though "rapid" changes on the ground.

Government troops have been on the offensive around the capital, in the central province of Homs and in the south, battling against rebel advances there.

Assad has been president since 2000 when he took over after his father and predecessor, Hafez Assad, died after ruling Syria for three decades. His second seven-year-term ends in mid-2014.

Syria's opposition wants Assad to step down and hand over power to a transitional government until new elections are held.

Despite the bloody conflict, Assad still enjoys wide support among some Syrians, particularly minorities including Christians and members of his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

"If I have a feeling that the Syrian people want me to be president in the coming period I will run for the post," Assad said. "If the answer is no, I will not run and I don't see a problem in that."

Assad used the interview to attack Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, warning Ankara will pay "a high price" for allowing foreign fighters to enter Syria from its territory to fight the Syrian government forces.

Erdogan has been one of Assad's harshest critics since Syria's uprising erupted in March 2011.

"This government, represented by Erdogan, is responsible for the blood of tens of thousands of Syrians, and is responsible for the destruction of Syria's infrastructure," Assad said. It is also "responsible for endangering security of the region, not only Syria."

"You cannot hide terrorists in your pocket. They are like a scorpion, which will eventually sting you," Assad added, saying Muslim extremists from more than 80 countries are coming to Syria by sneaking across the border with Turkey.

In Damascus, a team of international weapons experts visiting Syria left their hotel early Friday, heading out on their fourth day of work in the country. Their mission - endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution last week - is to scrap Syria's capacity to manufacture chemical weapons by Nov. 1 and to destroy Assad's entire stockpile by mid-2014.

Their mission stems from the deadly Aug. 21 attack on opposition-held Damascus suburbs in which the U.N. has determined the nerve agent sarin was used.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian troops shelled and tried to storm the village of Samadaniyeh near the Golan Heights and brought in reinforcements. The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said rebels were able to destroy two tanks in Samadanyeh.

The Observatory said Kurdish gunmen attacked a post with al-Qaida-linked fighters near the town of Azaz, which has witnessed intra-rebel clashes since last week. Rami Abdul-Rahman, the Observatory's chief, said one of the fighters killed belonged to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.

The FSA's Northern Storm Brigade has for days led the battles against al-Qaida's ISIL in Azaz, near the border with Turkey.

On Thursday, six powerful rebel factions called on ISIL and the Northern Storm to stop their fighting and resolve their differences before an Islamic court in Aleppo, but the appeal appears to have had little effect.

In the interview with Halk TV, Assad dismissed long circulating rumors that his secretive younger brother, Maher Assad, a top army brigadier general, had been wounded in an assassination attempt.

"All rumors about our family during the crisis are baseless lies," Assad said, and added about Maher: "He is present and on top of his work, at his post and in good health."

The younger Assad commands elite troops tasked with protecting Damascus from rebels on the city's outskirts.

Syrian rebels call on rivals to end infighting

BEIRUT — BEIRUT (AP) — Six Syrian rebel groups are calling on two major rival rebel factions battling each other in the north to end the infighting.

The six released a statement late Wednesday urging the rival factions to "cease the fire immediately" and resolve their differences before an Islamic court.

The two major factions battling in the north are al-Qaida's Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant on one side, and the Western-backed Free Syrian Army's Northern Storm Brigade on the other.

The infighting has become an increasingly prominent component in Syria's conflict, now in its third year.

The statement was reported by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which documents the civil war and also rebel-on-rebel fighting.

Among those that signed the appeal are the Islamic Army and the Tawheed Brigade.