Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned Washington in an interview published on Monday in Russia that any U.S. military intervention in Syria would fail and denied that his forces had used chemical weapons.
"Failure awaits the United States as in all previous wars it has unleashed, starting with Vietnam and up to the present day," he told the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper in an interview which the Russian daily said was conducted in Damascus.
Assad said Syrian government forces had been close to the area, in suburbs of Damascus, where rebel forces accused his troops of firing poison gas projectiles last week, and there was no clear front line there.
"Would any state use chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction in a place where its own forces are concentrated? That would go against elementary logic," Assad told Izvestia.
"So, accusations of this kind are entirely political and the reason for them is the government forces' series of victories over the terrorists," he said, referring to rebels fighting in the two-year-old civil war.
Read More
