Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
said that the external support for the Syrian opposition fighters was "the main reason" behind the fall of Idlib city in northwestern the country, stressing that the Syrian regime's military capabilities are no longer as in the past, after four years of war.
In an interview with the Swedish newspaper Expressen published on Friday, Assad said that the military and massive financial support provided by
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
to the "armed terrorist groups" is the main factor that led to the fall of Idlib city last March.
Regarding the Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese support received by the Syrian regime's army, Assad said that the Syrian Arab military capabilities are no longer as they used to be in the past, "especially after four years of continuous war".
"It is our right as a government popularly elected in Syria, to ask for support from any country or organization that can help us in the eradication of terrorism," he said.
Responding to the accusations on his forces re-use of chemical weapons in its war with the opposition, Assad said: "These claims are part of a propaganda war against Syria. The Western officials are trying to promote lies to the public, and this does not mean that we do not make mistakes, but the Western perspective doesn't reflect reality of the region as it is."
"The talk about the use of chemical weapons is part of the propaganda war, that's why conflicting figures and statistics emerge every once in a while regarding those weapons," he added.
Talking about human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
in Syria, Assad stressed that torture in Syria "is not a systematic policy, but merely individual acts, and the perpetrators are being held accountable before the law".