| New York Times | - |
Syria lashed out at Turkey and Jordan on Thursday for what it called their duplicitous work in fomenting the Syrian
rebellion, accusing the Turkish prime minister of chronic lies and
telling the Jordanians they were “playing with fire” in letting ...
Jordanians and Turks Are Focus of Syria’s Ire
By RICK GLADSTONE
Published: April 4, 2013
Syria lashed out at Turkey and Jordan
on Thursday for what it called their duplicitous work in fomenting the
Syrian rebellion, accusing the Turkish prime minister of chronic lies
and telling the Jordanians they were “playing with fire” in letting
insurgents arm and train on their soil — a possible hint of retaliation.
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The criticisms in the state news media appeared to be part of an
intensified propaganda response to new rebel gains in the two-year-old
conflict and President Bashar al-Assad’s further isolation.
It included snippets of an interview that Mr. Assad had given to a
Turkish television station, in which he also denounced the Arab League
for granting Syria’s seat to the opposition coalition bent on
overthrowing him.
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was once close to Mr.
Assad, has turned into an ardent enemy and repeatedly called for his
departure. Turkey is also housing more than 250,000 Syrian refugees and
is helping the Free Syrian Army insurgent group, although the Turks
insist they are not providing weapons. Syria, which shares a 550-mile
border with Turkey, has frequently accused Turkey of arming the rebels.
“Erdogan has not said a single word of truth since the beginning of the
crisis in Syria,” Mr. Assad said in the interview with the Ulusal Kanal
television channel in Turkey that is to be broadcast on Friday. A brief
preview was posted on YouTube.
Mr. Assad appeared to reserve special criticism for the Arab League,
which suspended Syria’s membership in November 2011 and awarded the
vacant seat to the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and
Opposition Forces, as the legitimate representative of the Syrian
people, in a formal ceremony on March 26.
“Real legitimacy is not accorded by organizations or foreign officials,”
he said. “All these theatrics have no value in our eyes.”
Syria state television, citing reports in The New York Times
and other Western news media about Jordan’s role in helping the rebels,
said they showed Jordan had “a hand in training terrorists and then
facilitating their entry into Syria,” according to a translation by The
Associated Press. It quoted state radio as saying Jordan was “playing
with fire.”
The Syrian newspaper Al Thawra, also citing those Western news reports,
said in a front-page editorial that the Jordanian government could not
claim neutrality while actively supporting the insurgents and
collaborating with the United States, Saudi Arabia and others hostile to
Mr. Assad. “Their attempts to put out the flame that the leaked
information caused will fail in allowing them to continue their game of
ambiguity because they have gotten really close to the volcanic crater,”
the editorial said.
In what appeared to be a veiled threat of retaliation, the editorial
also said “it is difficult to prevent sparks from crossing the border.”
There was no comment from Jordan’s government on the warnings, which
have come as insurgent activity in southern Syria near the Jordanian
border has escalated and posed a new threat to Assad loyalists there. In
the past few weeks, rebels have seized territory near the southern city
of Dara’a, where the uprising against Mr. Assad first began.
At the same time, Jordan is facing an acute refugee crisis caused by the
Syrian conflict. There are at least 320,000 registered refugees in the
country, according to the United Nations, and many more who entered
Jordan without registering.
United Nations officials have been warning that the refugee crisis could
overwhelm Syria’s neighbors, who have collectively absorbed more than
1.3 million Syrians since the conflict began.
On Thursday in Lebanon, home to about 500,000 Syrian refugees, the
commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency,
Filippo Grandi, said the refugee flows caused by the conflict were
becoming “unmanageable and dangerous.”
Mr. Grandi’s agency is responsible for Palestinian
refugees, a legacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Lebanon, which has a
population of four million, is already home to about 460,000 Palestinian
refugees, and the Lebanese are increasingly concerned that Syria’s
Palestinian refugee population of 530,000 could surge into Lebanon if
fighting intensifies in the Damascus area, where many of them live. So
far, however, Mr. Grandi said, more than 90 percent have stayed in
Syria.
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