Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday rejected US accusations that Syrian or Russian planes struck an aid convoy in Aleppo or that his troops were preventing food from entering the city’s rebel-held eastern neighborhoods, blaming the US for the collapse of a ceasefire many had hoped would bring relief to the war-ravaged country.
In an interview in Damascus, al-Assad also said US airstrikes on Syrian troops last week were intentional, dismissing US officials’ statements that they were an accident.
Al-Assad said the US lacked “the will” to join forces with Russia in fighting extremists.
Photo: AFP
He said that his enemies alone were to blame for nearly six years of devastation across Syria and denied any excesses by his troops.
He said the war was only likely to “drag on” because of continued external support for his opponents.
Meanwhile, at a UN Security Council session originally envisioned to enshrine Syria’s Sept. 9 truce, the US and Russia abandoned diplomatic niceties in a fractious public debate over Syria, blaming each other for spoiling the ceasefire and offering only temporary patches to stem the bloodshed.
“Supposedly we all want the same goal. I’ve heard that again and again,” US Secretary of State John Kerry told the council. “Everybody sits there and says we want a united Syria, secular, respecting the rights of all people, in which the people of Syria can choose their leadership, but we are proving woefully inadequate in our ability to be able to get to the table and have that conversation and make it happen.”
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said the US bore the biggest responsibility for peace by separating opposition forces from terrorists.
He called for the UN to expand its terrorism list to include groups at the fringes of US-backed rebels and cited a series of truce violations by them.
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