DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Syria says the U.S. officials seeking to destabilize Syria must be held accountable, in response to the vow by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to hold the Syrian government accountable for “human rights violations and abuses.”
“The American officials who used unlimited funds to destroy Syria and shed the blood of its people must be held accountable,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“Without funding, support, and armament from the United States of America and its Western allies, the armed terrorist organizations would not have been able to commit massacres against the Syrians and destroy their infrastructure and civilization,” it said.
The ministry stressed that lasting peace in Syria could not be achieved amid the presence of U.S. forces on Syrian soil.
The statement came in response to a press statement issued by Blinken on Monday, in which he said Washington will continue to support the international efforts “to ensure there are consequences for the ongoing human rights violations and abuses committed in Syria.”
“The U.S. Secretary of State, or the ex-secretaries, couldn’t wash their hands stained with Syrians’ blood ... in addition to the theft of Syrian resources estimated at nearly 30 billion U.S. dollars that the U.S. should pay to the Syrians,” the Syrian foreign ministry said.
U.S.-led occupation forces invaded Syria in 2014 under the pretext of the emergence of the Daesh terrorist group which had seized huge swathes of land in both Syria and neighboring Iraq and aimed to overrun Iran as well.
It took over three years for the national Iraqi and Syrian armies to liberate the areas from the grip of the world’s most notorious terrorist group.
Damascus and Baghdad declared the extermination of the terrorist outfit in late 2017 and have since been involved in clear-up operations against the extremist group’s remnants.
Despite the announced demise of Daesh, Iraq’s border regions shared with Syria are still suffering from sporadic attacks by underground cells.
China has also called on the United States to stop plundering the natural resources in Syria and withdraw its military forces from the country.
“We call on the United States to sincerely respect the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of other countries, and to immediately stop its illegal military presence and marauding in Syria,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a news briefing on Friday.
China also urged the U.S. to lift the illegal sanctions slapped on Syria and to stop all actions that exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the country.
“The United States has illegally intervened in military activities related to the Syrian crisis, which has led to the death of a large number of innocent civilians and a serious humanitarian disaster,” Mao said.