MOSCOW, January 11 (Itar-Tass) — Syrian president will not step down. He has said that he enjoys support of the Syrian population and therefore will not quit his post. “Many people have been killed in recent months, and these events hurt me,” the 46-year old president said on Tuesday, stressing that “nobody issued orders to open fire on civilians.”
However, violence in the country, first of all from the government forces, is growing, Moskovskiy Novosti noted. According to UN data, more than 5,000 people fell victim to it since the start of the civil resistance in March. “The regional and international forces trying to destabilise Syria” are responsible for this, Assad stated, adding that he meant an “external conspiracy.”
It follows from his speech that one of the “conspirators” is the League of Arab States (LAS) that “now should be called “Foreign League.” In November LAS suspended Syria’s membership in the organisation. “Syria’s ousting from LAS shows that the Arab identity of this organisation has been betrayed. LAS does not take Arab identity from Syria, it is LAS that loses this status because it refused from it itself,” Assad said.