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News ID: 73744
Publish Date : 10 December 2019 - 21:55
Italian TV Refuses to Broadcast Interview

President Assad: OPCW Faked Gas Attack Report

BEIRUT (Dispatches) — Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview that the global chemical weapons watchdog has faked and falsified a report over an attack near the capital Damascus last year "just because the Americans wanted them to do so.”
Assad’s comments to Italy’s Rai News 24 came after a letter by a member of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) team released by secret-spilling website WikiLeaks called its conclusions biased.
"That’s what the OPCW organization did – they faked and falsified the report, just because the Americans wanted them to do so,” Assad said, speaking in English. "So, fortunately, this report proved that everything we said during the last few years, since 2013, is correct.”
"We were right, they were wrong. This is proof, this is concrete proof regarding this issue,” Assad said about the leaks. He added that "again, the OPCW is biased, is being politicized and is being immoral.”
OPCW’s chief Fernando Arias supported the report issued in March by a fact-finding mission from the watchdog that found "reasonable grounds” that chlorine was used in a deadly attack on the eastern Damascus suburb of Douma.
The mission wasn’t mandated to attribute blame for the attack, but the U.S., Britain and France blamed Syria and launched airstrikes against its military which was in the middle of advances against foreign-backed terrorists.
Assad’s office said the president gave the interview to RAI 24 on Nov. 26 and that both parties agreed that the interview would air on Dec. 2, on both Italian RAI News 24 and Syrian national media outlets.
It added that RAI asked that the interview be postponed twice and Assad’s office said that it will broadcast the interview in full, on Monday which they did.
RAI later issued a statement saying the interview wasn’t commissioned by any of the RAI news organs "thus it was impossible to agree in advance about a date to broadcast it.”
On Friday, a Newsweek reporter resigned after the American magazine refused to publish his article questioning Western-backed findings about the origin of the Douma chemical attack.
Tareq Haddad submitted his resignation after his editor refused to publish his article mentioning an internal OPCW email that had revealed inconsistencies between actual findings on the ground by the organization’s experts and the United Nations chemical watchdog’s final report.

"Yesterday, I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason,” Haddad tweeted on Saturday.
The email sent by an OPCW member was revealed by WikiLeaks in late November. In the communication, the inspector had accused the watchdog of doctoring the Douma report.
The author of the email had rejected as "highly misleading and not supported by facts” the OPCW claim that "sufficient evidence” was found to determine chlorine was "likely released” from cylinders the organization’s experts had analyzed at two different locations in the Syrian city.
Arias claimed two weeks ago that the report was written following careful consideration of all information. 
In the interview, President Assad blasted Europe’s key role in creating chaos in Syria, saying the current refugee crisis in European countries is a consequence of their support for terrorism in the Arab country.
"Why do you have refugees in Europe? It’s a simple question: because of terrorism that’s being supported by Europe,” the Syrian president said.
"Europe was the main player in creating chaos in Syria.  So, what goes around comes around,” he said.
"They sent armaments; they created this chaos. That’s why a lot of people find it difficult to stay in Syria; millions of people couldn’t live here so they had to get out of Syria,” he added.
The Syrian president also warned about other repercussions of external support for terrorism in the Arab state.
"Definitely, whenever you have chaos, it’s going to be bad for everyone, it’s going to have side-effects and repercussions, especially when there is external interference,” he explained.
Many refugees take perilous sea journeys to reach European shores, from where they attempt to make their way into wealthier European Union states, particularly Germany, in search of better living conditions.
At least 15,000 people have lost their lives in Mediterranean crossings since 2014, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration.