BERLIN, June 17 (RIA Novosti) – Syrian President Bashar Assad has warned EU nations against supplying arms to rebel groups in Syria and denied the use of chemical weapons against the armed opposition.
"If the Europeans deliver those weapons … Europe will pay the price for that," Assad told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in an interview published Monday.
"Hardened terrorists will learn how to use these weapons and return to Europe equipped with extremist ideology," he warned, adding that arms shipments to the rebels would be “exportation of terrorism to Europe.”
The US said Thursday that it would provide military support to the rebels because Syrian government forces had used nerve gas in the conflict. In late May, top European Union officials confirmed that the bloc would not renew its prohibition on weapons sales to Syria rebel groups.
In his interview, Assad rejected Western allegations that the Syrian army had used chemical weapons against the opposition.
"If Paris, London and Washington had so much as a scrap of evidence for their claims they would have submitted it to the world,” he said.
Washington said Thursday that it now believed with “high confidence” that Syrian government forces had used chemical weapons many times during the two-year civil war, and vowed to boost US aid to the armed opposition fighting to remove Assad from power.
According to recent UN data, the number of documented deaths resulting from the conflict in Syria between March 2011 and the end of April 2013 reached almost 93,000.
