US air strikes are an act of aggression: Assad
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told a group of Russian politicians that Western missile strikes on his country are an act of aggression, Russian news agencies say.
Russian MPs met with Mr Assad on Sunday after the United States, France and Britain launched missile strikes on Syria in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack a week ago.
Russia, which is helping Assad fight rebel forces opposed to his rule, immediately condemned the strikes and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
“From the point of view of the president, this was aggression and we share this position,” Russia’s TASS news agency quoted MP Sergei Zheleznyak as saying after the meeting with Assad.
The Syrian president was in a “good mood” and continuing his work in Damascus, agencies cited the politicians as saying, and praised the Soviet-era air defence systems used by Syria to help to repel the Western attacks.
A senior Russian military official said on Saturday that Syria’s air defences, which mostly consist of systems made in the Soviet Union, had intercepted 71 of the 105 American, British and French missiles.
The Pentagon has said the strikes on Saturday successfully hit the three chemical weapons facilities which were targeted.
There was “information” that showed that both sarin and chlorine were used in the most recent chemical weapons attack in Syria, prompting the US strikes, the official said.
In response, Russian MP Dmitry Sablin quoted Assad as saying: “(On Saturday) we saw American aggression. And we were able to repel it with Soviet missiles from the 70s,” TASS reported.
Sablin also said Assad accepted an invitation to visit the Siberian region of Khanty-Mansi in Russia. It was not clear when the visit would take place.
Russia said on Saturday it would consider supplying S-300 surface to-air missile systems to Syria following the Western strikes, but this was not discussed at the meeting with Assad, agencies reported.
Assad also declined to comment on calls by the US State Department to declare alleged Syrian stockpiles of chemical weapons, Zheleznyak said.
Meanwhile Russian Foreign Ministry official Vladimir Ermakov told Interfax news agency “there is every reason to believe that after the US strikes on Syria, the Americans will be eager to move to a strategic dialogue.”
“You cannot say the Americans … do not demonstrate a desire to lead a strategic dialogue,” he said. “In the US administration there are specific people who it is possible to talk with.”