{"id":42993,"date":"2013-09-19T13:11:34","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T10:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=42993"},"modified":"2013-09-19T13:11:34","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T10:11:34","slug":"syria-civil-warassad-regime-destroy-chemical-weapons-in-a-year-breaking-news-42993","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/syria-civil-warassad-regime-destroy-chemical-weapons-in-a-year-breaking-news-42993\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria Civil War:Assad regime destroy chemical weapons in a year \/ Breaking News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Assad-Destroy-Chemical-Weapons\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

Syrian leader Bashar al Assad has said he is committed to destroying his stockpile of chemical weapons \u00a0but warned it would take a year to do so.<\/h1>\n

In an interview with Fox News, Syrian leader Assad said he was committed to getting rid of the arsenal but conceded it would cost at least\u00a0\u00a3600m ($1bn).<\/p>\n

And he also challenged America to foot the bill.<\/p>\n

“It needs a lot of money, it needs about one billion (US dollars),” he told the US crew at the presidential palace in Damascus.<\/p>\n

“If the American administration is ready to pay those money, and to take responsibility of bringing toxic materials to the United States, why don’t they do it?”<\/p>\n

Mr Assad also insisted that his decision to destroy the weapons was not forced upon him by the threat of US strikes.<\/p>\n

Assad said destroying the weapons was “a very complicated operation, technically”.<\/p>\n

“So it depends, you have to ask the experts what they mean by quickly. It has a certain schedule,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It needs a year, or maybe a little bit more.”<\/p>\n

Mr Assad also said a UN report that found “clear and convincing evidence” of a sarin nerve gas attack in Syria last month is “unrealistic”, and denied responsibility for it.<\/p>\n

“Sarin gas is called kitchen gas,” he said.<\/p>\n

“You know why? Because anybody can make sarin in his house. Any rebel can make sarin.<\/p>\n

“Second, we know that all the rebels are supported by governments. So any government that would have such chemical can hand it over.”<\/p>\n

He also used the one-hour interview to criticise the American stance in the Syrian crisis.<\/p>\n

He said that, unlike Russia, Washington had tried to get involved in Syria’s leadership and governance.<\/p>\n

And as diplomatic wrangling over Syria’s chemical weapons continues, a roadside bomb in a central region of the country has killed 19 people.<\/p>\n

A Homs province official said the explosion\u00a0targeted a bus in the village of Jbourin.<\/p>\n

It comes as US Senator John McCain penned an opinion piece for a Russian website in which he criticises Vladimir Putin’s close ties with the Assad regime.<\/p>\n

Mr McCain’s column was in response to Mr Putin’s\u00a0piece in The New York Times last week which was highly critical of America’s response to the Syrian crisis.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Syrian leader Bashar al Assad has said he is committed to destroying his stockpile of chemical weapons but warned it would take a year to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,1,118,37,101,14],"tags":[58754,77166,9002,16171,57678,29079,19016,58756,24658,58755],"class_list":["post-42993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","category-middle-east","category-politics","category-world","tag-assad-destroy-chemical-weapons","tag-breaking-news","tag-syria","tag-syria-assad","tag-syria-assad-regime","tag-syria-chemical-weapons","tag-syria-civil-war","tag-syrian-chemical-weapons-stockpile","tag-syrian-leader-assad","tag-syrian-leader-bashar-al-assad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}