PYD: Assad Regime Was Not Behind Damascus Chemical Attack

 

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – As a US-led multinational initiative is girding for possible military intervention in Syria, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) denies that the Syrian regime was behind last week’s chemical weapons attack in Damascus.

In an interview with Reuters, Salih Muslim says that Syrian President Bashar Assad would not have used chemical weapons so close to his capital.

"The regime in Syria... has chemical weapons, but they wouldn't use them around Damascus, five kilometers from the (UN) committee which is investigating chemical weapons,” Muslim told Reuters. “Of course they are not so stupid as to do so."

Muslim, whose group is accused by some Kurdish parties and the Syrian opposition of making backroom deals with the Assad regime, claims that the Syrian army has the upper hand in the civil war and therefore did not need to resort to the use of chemical weapons.

“Some other sides who want to blame the Syrian regime, who want to show them as guilty and then see action” are behind the chemical attack, according to Muslim.

Meanwhile, American military officials are already contemplating options for a strike against the Assad regime for the attack that killed hundreds in the suburbs of Damascus.

“I think it is pretty clear that chemical weapons were used against people in Syria,” American Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a BBC interview on Tuesday.

The Syrian regime has denied using chemical weapons, saying it is opposition propaganda.

But the US military chief said that intelligence reports rule out rebel involvement in the chemical attack.  “The intelligence conclude that it wasn’t the rebels who used it,” he said.

Muslim’s party has run a virtual autonomous state in the Kurdish areas of Syria since the withdrawal of the Syrian army and security forces last July, and its military wing has successfully fought off extremist elements inside the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the jihadi Jabhat al-Nusrah.