Assad Talks Tough Over UN Inquiry (Syria)

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 11-11-2005 | Ramsay Short

[blam]

Assad talks tough over UN inquiry

By Ramsay Short in Beirut
(Filed: 11/11/2005)

President Bashar al Assad of Syria threw down the gauntlet to the West yesterday, announcing "he would not bow his head to anyone in the world".

Bashar al Assad: ‘We will play their game’

In a defiant speech, he promised to cooperate with a UN probe that implicated his officials in the murder of a Lebanese leader but warned that the policy would end if Syria were harmed.

"We will play their game," he told an audience in Damascus university.

But he also launched a scathing attack on Lebanon's leadership, accusing them of turning their country into a hotbed of conspiracy against his regime.

Mr Assad rejected allegations of Syrian complicity in the death of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. He also claimed that Syria was being victimised and would be judged guilty whatever the result of the UN investigation into the killing.

"Whatever we do, and no matter how much we cooperate, after a month the result will be that we did not cooperate," he said.

His tirade included a verbal lashing for Lebanon's current prime minister, Fouad Siniora. He called him a "slave of his masters," a presumed reference to the West, and the country itself "a passage for conspiracy against Syria".

Syria had occupied Lebanon for three decades until April this year when it withdrew its troops under huge international pressure following Mr Hariri's assassination.

[ncountylee]

"he would not bow his head to anyone in the world".

An appeal to IslamoPuke pride.

[Logical me]

Why are we being battered by the leaders of small communistic countries and Bush hides his head behind his butt. If Bush doesn't wake up and tell this a@@hole to go to hell Bush will be the lame duck he is beginning to look like. I hate it. I thought he had more ba!!s. No wonder he is falling in the polls.