Refl: Kalau Assad dituduh membunuh warga Syria, maka timbul pertanyaan, apakah Soeharto, SBY etc orang-orang suci?
http://www.smh.com.au/world/assad-denies-responsibility-for-killing-by-syrian-forces-20111207-1oj9m.html Assad denies responsibility for killing by Syrian forces London December 8, 2011 Denial ... Bashar al-Assad. Photo: AFP WASHINGTON: The Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, denies he is responsible for the killing of thousands of protesters, telling a US television network he was not in charge of the forces behind the crackdown. In a rare interview, Dr Assad spoke on Monday to the ABC News journalist Barbara Walters in a bid to defend himself amid growing global condemnation of the nine-month-old clampdown, which the United Nations says has killed 4000 people. In one of the worst episodes of sectarian carnage in Syria since the uprising began nine months ago, dozens of corpses were recovered from the streets of Homs this week, some of them dismembered, decapitated and bearing signs of torture, activists and residents said. Advertisement: Story continues below Most of the bloodshed was on Monday, when the central Syrian city was convulsed by kidnappings, random shootings and tit-for-tat killings, activists said. In the worst atrocity, 36 bodies were dumped in a square in a neighbourhood along a fault line between the city's Sunni Muslim majority and its Alawite minority, said Mohammed Saleh, a 54-year-old activist who has tried to staunch the growing sectarian tension. ''What happened yesterday is a massive crime,'' he said. ''I am in pain, so much pain. I was getting a call every minute telling me that someone new got killed.'' ABC News planned to air the Assad interview last night, but a reporter for the network, seeking US reaction at a State Department briefing, quoted Dr Assad as saying: ''I'm President. I don't own the country, so they're not my forces. There's a difference between having a policy to crack down and between having some mistakes committed by some officials. There is a big difference.'' State Department spokesman Mark Toner criticised Dr Assad, saying he had multiple opportunities to end the violence. ''I find it ludicrous that he is attempting to hide behind some sort of shell game [and] claim he doesn't exercise authority in his own country,'' he said. ''There's just no indication he's doing anything other than cracking down in the most brutal fashion on a peaceful opposition movement.'' Dr Assad's family has ruled Syria with an iron fist for four decades. His brother Maher heads the army's Fourth Division which oversees the capital and the elite Republican Guard. Syrian state media pointed to the involvement of Turkish forces in armed clashes on Syria's northern border on Tuesday. In one of the most serious clashes to date, the Syrian authorities said they had repelled an incursion by 35 ''armed terrorists'' in the province of Idlib. They said some were wounded, and ferried away from the battle by military vehicles to Turkish army aid stations. Turkey has provided a base and diplomatic cover to the Free Syrian Army, a growing band of defectors, and it is unlikely an attack with such a large group of men could have been planned without the country's knowledge. That alone is enough to draw the former allies closer to open war, although both are likely to try to avoid it. Turkey's Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has said a buffer zone inside Syria for refugees from the fighting might have to be considered, with outside military intervention if necessary. Agence France-Presse; The New York Times; Telegraph, London Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/assad-denies-responsibility-for-killing-by-syrian-forces-20111207-1oj9m.html#ixzz1fyerqHfp [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
