Bashar al-Assad Quotes - Page 9

The part in Aleppo, what [people] call it the eastern part, is occupied by the terrorists for the last three years, and they have been using the civilians as human shields.

You cannot be desperate when the army is making advances. That should have happened - if we take into consideration that this presumption is correct and this is reality - you use it when you're in a desperate situation.

As I said, this [repercussions] may take different forms : direct and indirect. Direct when people want to retaliate, or governments. Indirect when you're going to have instability and the spread of terrorism all over the region that will influence the west directly.

We're talking about one region, bigger regions, not only about Syria. This interlinked region, this intermingled, interlocked, whatever you want to call it ; if you strike somewhere, you have to expect the repercussions somewhere else in different forms in ways you don't expect.

Some of these agendas wanted me to quit, very simply, so they said "we have all the guarantees if you want to leave, and all the money and everything you want." Of course, you just ignore that.

It's not about me, again, this fight is not my fight, it's not the fight of the government ; it's the fight of the country, of the Syrian people.

You cannot import anything from outside your country regarding the future of your country.

We have to be there to get the evidence like what happened in Aleppo when we had evidence. And because the United States didn't send the team, we sent the evidence to the Russians.

I don't have support. Not me ; all Syria. Every agreement is between every class and every sector in Syria ; government, people, trade, military, culture, everything ; it's like the cooperation between your country and any other country in the world. It's the same cooperation. It's not about me ; it's not support for the crisis.

The United States accused Syria, and because you accused you have to bring evidence [of chemical weapons], this first of all. We have to find evidences when we are there.

Any external support, if you want to call it support, let's use this world, is... how to say... it's going to be additional, but it's not the base to depend on more than the Syrian support.

The question is who threw chemicals on the same day on our soldiers. That's the same question. Technically, not the soldiers. Soldiers don't throw missiles on themselves. So, either the rebels, the terrorists, or a third party. We don't have any clue yet.

In Aleppo we had the missile itself, and the material, and the sample from the sand, from the soil, and samples from the blood [of chemical weapons].

If we want to expect something from this [Barack Obama] administration, it is not to be weak, to be strong to say that "we don't have evidence," that "we have to obey the international law", that "we have to go back to the Security Council and the United Nations".

You hardly find any military base in distant areas from the [Syria] cities unless it's an airport or something like this, but most of the military bases or centers within inhabited areas.

To have opposition ? We have it, and you can go and meet with them. We have some of them within the government, we have some of them outside the government. They are opposition. We have it.

If the rebels or the terrorists in this region or any other group have [chemical warfare], this could happen, I don't know. I'm not a fortuneteller to tell you what's going to happen.

We said [U.S] are going to be repercussions of the mistaken way of dealing with it, of treating the terrorism, but nobody expected 11th of September. So, you cannot expect. It is difficult for anyone to tell you what is going to happen. It's an area where everything is on the brink of explosion. You have to expect everything.

I think the most important part of this now is, let's say the American people, but the polls show that the majority now don't want a war, anywhere, not only against Syria.

You look at [terrorists] faces, they look foreigners, but where are they coming from ? How precise this estimate is difficult to tell, but definitely the majority are Al-Qaeda.

You said treaties, and a Russian official said ; we have not agreement... contracts, that we have to fulfill, and those contracts are like any country ; you buy armaments, you buy anything you want.

The criteria or the paradigm for us is not the West, not the Western paradigm, because the West has its own culture, we have our own culture, they have their own reality, we have our own reality.

We were on the way to democracy. We didn't say that we are fully democratic, we were on the way, we were moving forward. Slowly or fast, that's subjective, cannot be objective, that's always subjective. But we're moving forward in that regard.

The most important part of [Russian] support is the aerial support, which is very essential, they have very strong firepower, and at the same time they are the main supply of our army for more than sixty years, so our army depends on the Russian support in different military domains.

[Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia] are here because they could offer very essential and important help, because the situation that we are facing now is not only about a few terrorists from within Syria; it's like international war against Syria.