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| Syrian President Bashar al-Assad [FILE PHOTO: SANA] |
Damascus: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday criticized Britain’s
intervention in the Syria crisis accusing Syria of playing an
"unconstructive role" and meddling with the affairs in the region.
Calling the
UK’s involvement naive and unrealistic Assad warned other nations
to stop interfering in his country's affairs, in a rare interview with The Sunday Times newspaper.
"This (British) government is acting in a naive,
confused and unrealistic manner," he said of prime minister David
Cameron's conservative leadership, for trying to end an EU arms embargo so that
the rebels could be supplied with weapons.
His remarks come amid pledges of direct aid to the armed
Syrian rebels from the UK and US.
Assad singled out Britain as a "shallow and
immature" power.
"The problem with this government is that their shallow
and immature rhetoric only highlights this tradition of bullying and
hegemony," he said.
Britain, along with most of Western Europe, the United
States, and several Arab states, have backed Syria's opposition in rejecting
any role for Assad in a future Syrian government.
Britain has been pushing for the lifting of a European ban
on arms supplies to Syrian rebels.
At a meeting last month, European Union foreign ministers
decided instead to allow only "nonlethal" aid and "technical assistance"
to flow to Syria's opposition.
Inside Syria, the army command claimed it had wiped out
remnants of "terrorist agents and mercenaries" in the area that links
the government-controlled central city of Hama with Aleppo's international
airport.