Assad says regime is ‘waiting for evidence’ of chemical attack

DENY DENY DENY: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hedged, dodged and avoided direct answers as much as possible during an interview that aired on the American-based Fox network on Wednesday. Saying he had not yet read the UN’s report on chemical weapons use on August 21^st, minutes later Assad interrupted the interviewer to note that no mention of the regime’s Republican Guard had been made anywhere in the UN report. The interviewer appeared not to notice the contradiction.

When asked whether President Barack Obama could trust Assad to follow through on his pledge to hand over all Syria’s chemical weapons, Assad said: “I don’t think President Obama should trust me first; the Syrian people should trust me, not President Obama.”

Assad employed a professorial tone throughout the interview to push back against the interviewers. “We have the samples” from East Ghouta following the chemical weapons attack, Assad said, but his regime “didn’t have any formal report” about them. “The information we have is different from evidence,” he said.

“You have to wait until you have evidence. You can agree or disagree when you have evidence.” When the interviewer pointed out the diverse evidence that the regime was behind the chemical attack, Assad said “Nobody said it’s not used…no one has verified the credibility of the video and the pictures.”