Iran Says Assad
Should Recognize 'Legitimate Demands of His People'
Is it
time for the Syrian regime to 'answer the calls of its people'? According to
this news account from Iran's state-controlled Kahyan, Iran Foreign
Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, while labeling America 'insolent' for demanding Syrian President al-Assad's
resignation, advised al-Assad to take heed of the 'legitimate'
demands of his people.
Iran Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has called on Syrian President al-Assad to heed the 'legitmate' demands of his people. Given Iran's own treatment of citizen protests, this must mean that Tehran is concerned about Bashar al-Assad's hopes for retaining power.
TEHRAN: On Saturday, Iran denounced
Western calls for President Bashar al-Assad to resign as
"insolent," and warned that a power vacuum in Damascus could spark an
unprecedented regional crisis.
"If a power vacuum is
created within Syria's ruling system, it will have unprecedented repercussions,"
Iran Foreign Miniitsster Ali Akbar Salehi said. He also said that Syria has "sensitive
neighbors," and that change there could lead to crisis.
Syria borders five nations
and controls the water supplies to Iraq, Jordan and parts of occupied Palestine.
Salehi called on the Damascus
government to recognize the “legitimate” demands of its people.
“Governments should answer the
calls of their people, whether it is in Syria, Yemen or other countries. … The
people of these nations have legitimate demands, and governments should answer such
demands as quickly as possible.”
Alluding to the international
military intervention in Libya to aid revolutionary forces in ending the rule
of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, Foreign Minister Salehi warned of dangerous implications
for the region if the Syria crisis isn't resolved peacefully.
His remarks echoed the Friday
remarks of leader by Lebanese national resistance leader and Hezbullah chief
Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, in which he warned of potential fallout for the region
and called on Syria to introduce reforms.
Two weeks ago, the United
States and some European countries called on President Assad to step down, but
he rejected the demands as meaningless and insisted that he was the
legitimately elected leader of Syria.
According to the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, one person was killed Saturday when Syrian security
forces shot at demonstrators emerging from the Rifai Mosque in the Kfar Susseh neighborhood
of western Damascus. The imam of the mosque, Osama al-Rifai, was wounded in the
attack along with nine others, according to the Observatory.
While the opposition accuses Syrian
security forces of being behind the killings, the government blames outlaws, saboteurs
and armed terrorist groups for the deadly violence, stressing that the unrest
is being orchestrated from abroad.
Foreign Minister Salehi called
Washington's demand that the Syrian president resign "insolent and a
violation of international convention."
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
In a White
House statement issued August 18, U.S. President Barack Obama called on
Assad to step down, saying, “The future of Syria must be determined by its
people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. … His calls for
dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and
slaughtering his own people. … For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has
come for President Assad to step aside.”
Foreign Minister Salehi shot back,
saying, “Syria is an independent country. International conventions do not
allow nations to take a position of such interference toward other countries … The
U.S. still considers itself the world's policeman. … Such statements should not
be taken seriously. If comments like these were at all effective, they would
have long ago resolved the issue of Afghanistan.”
